UK Heatwave Analysis I: Total Model Failure So . . . . . . It must be worse than we thought!
That’s the basic message from World Weather Attribution who have - of course - run off a quick-fire, non peer-reviewed attribution analysis of the two day ‘heatwave’ which affected the UK on July 18th and 19th which - of course - concludes that it was man-made climate change wot dunnit.
Here’s what they say about their study, which we’ll look at in detail in Part II:
The likelihood of observing such an event in a 1.2°C cooler world is extremely low, and statistically impossible in two out of the three analysed stations.
The observational analysis shows that a UK heatwave as defined above would be about 4°C cooler in preindustrial times.
To estimate how much of these observed changes is attributable to human-caused climate change we combine climate models with the observations. It is important to highlight that all models systematically underestimate the observed trends. [My emphasis]. The combined results are thus almost certainly too conservative.
Combining the results based on observational and model analysis, we find that, for both event definitions, human-caused climate change made the event at least 10 times more likely. In the models, the same event would be about 2°C less hot in a 1.2°C cooler world, which is a much smaller change in intensity than observed.
This is a roundabout way of saying basically that the two day heatwave which was observed was not predicted by any climate models. The average maximum two day temperature observed was twice the intensity of that predicted to occur by the climate models. Hence, they all completely and comprehensively failed to simulate this event by a very wide margin (100% to be exact). In a normal world, this would prompt scientists to conclude that the models were faulty and that perhaps the science and a priori assumptions which are built into them need to be re-examined. Or they would ask themselves, did some other factor or factors contribute significantly to this event? But no, in the world of post-normal, post Enlightenment ‘science’, the conclusion is that the models are right, but not right enough, in that they underestimate how bad heatwaves are getting, so then we get the inevitable siren call of alarmists everywhere: “Arrggghhh, it’s much worse than we thought! Urgent action is now super-urgent! Act now or we’re all going to die!”
Friederike Otto, one of the scientists at WWA is quoted as saying in the Guardian (of course):
Friederike Otto, a senior climate lecturer at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College London, said: “In Europe and other parts of the world we are seeing more and more record-breaking heatwaves causing extreme temperatures that have become hotter faster than in most climate models.
“It’s a worrying finding that suggests that if carbon emissions are not rapidly cut, the consequences of climate change on extreme heat in Europe, which already is extremely deadly, could be even worse than we previously thought.”
It’s not the first time WWA have done an attribution analysis of a heatwave and found that the climate models just don’t simulate the observed temperatures, therefore, by definition, cannot be used to positively attribute the event to alleged man-made climate change. I wrote about it here. But that doesn’t stop them doing so. They pulled exactly the same trick with a heatwave in June 2019, telling us how climate change made the event more likely even though the models failed to simulate the observed event by a large margin.
This consistent failure is, apparently, not cause to re-examine the accuracy of the models, it just means that we should be even more afraid! Hence the Graun states boldly:
Extreme heat in western Europe has increased more than climate models have predicted. While models estimate greenhouse gas emissions increased temperatures in this heatwave by 2C, historical weather records suggest the heatwave would have been 4C cooler in a world that had not been warmed by human activities.
Climate experts are concerned this means the impacts of global heating will be even more drastic than previously thought.
Meteorologists have said the results of this study are “sobering” as they confirm what was previously feared – that climate change is having a large impact on temperatures, making extreme heat more likely.
Experts have called for rapid cuts in emissions to prevent the situation from worsening. Extreme heat kills thousands of people across Europe, and it is thought hundreds of excess deaths in the UK were caused by the recent heatwave.
The Graun headline and sub-title says it all:
Climate breakdown made UK heatwave 10 times more likely, study finds
Recent extreme temperatures were higher than those simulated by climate models, analysis reveals
Then comes the inevitable picture of a fire, in all likelihood started by arsonists, just to drive home the fear narrative.
Only post normal climate scientists and their mouthpieces in the main stream media could turn a failure of The Science into a reason to act faster and harder based on the failed predictions of the models which underpin The Science!