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Models have been the AGW advocates' go-to rebuttal to inconvenient data. Of course that gave rise to the suspicion the models were tactically tuned. Now several years of public shaming may be letting in some sunlight. Judith Curry is owed much thanks for starting this movement years ago.
Climate modelers open up their black boxes to scrutiny
Posted on November 5, 2016 | 118 comments
by Judith Curry
Paul Voosen has written a remarkable article in Science about climate model tuning.
Continue reading →
Paul Voosen’s article in Science Climate scientists open up their black boxes to scrutiny follows up on the climate model tuning issue. Its a short paper, publicly available, it is well worth reading. Some excerpts:
Next week, many of the world’s 30 major modeling groups will convene for their main annual workshop at Princeton University; by early next year, these teams plan to freeze their code for a sixth round of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), in which these models are run through a variety of scenarios. By writing up their tuning strategies and making them publicly available for the first time, groups hope to learn how to make their predictions more reliable, says Bjorn Stevens, an MPIM director who has pushed for more transparency. And in a study that will be submitted by year’s end, six U.S. modeling centers will disclose their tuning strategies—showing that many are quite different.
Indeed, whether climate scientists like to admit it or not, nearly every model has been calibrated precisely to the 20th century climate records—otherwise it would have ended up in the trash. “It’s fair to say all models have tuned it,” says Isaac Held, a scientist at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, another prominent modeling center, in Princeton, New Jersey.
For years, climate scientists had been mum in public about their “secret sauce”: What happened in the models stayed in the models. The taboo reflected fears that climate contrarians would use the practice of tuning to seed doubt about models—and, by extension, the reality of human-driven warming. “The community became defensive,” Stevens says. “It was afraid of talking about things that they thought could be unfairly used against them.” . . . .
JC reflections
Well finally, we are seeing climate modeling move in a healthy direction, that has the potential to improve climate models, clarify uncertainties, and so build understanding of and trust in the models.
Its about time: the response of the climatariat to my writings about climate models circa 2009-2011 was to toss me out of the tribe, dismiss me as a ‘denier’, etc.
I find it absolutely remarkable that this statement was published in Science:
The taboo reflected fears that climate contrarians would use the practice of tuning to seed doubt about models—and, by extension, the reality of human-driven warming. “The community became defensive,” Stevens says. “It was afraid of talking about things that they thought could be unfairly used against them.”
This reflects pathetic behavior by the climate modelers (and I don’t blame Bjorn Stevens here; he is one of the good guys). You may recall what I wrote in my post Climategate essay Towards rebuilding trust:
In their misguided war against the skeptics, the CRU emails reveal that core research values became compromised. . . .
Climate modelers open up their black boxes to scrutiny
Posted on November 5, 2016 | 118 comments
by Judith Curry
Paul Voosen has written a remarkable article in Science about climate model tuning.
Continue reading →
Paul Voosen’s article in Science Climate scientists open up their black boxes to scrutiny follows up on the climate model tuning issue. Its a short paper, publicly available, it is well worth reading. Some excerpts:
Next week, many of the world’s 30 major modeling groups will convene for their main annual workshop at Princeton University; by early next year, these teams plan to freeze their code for a sixth round of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), in which these models are run through a variety of scenarios. By writing up their tuning strategies and making them publicly available for the first time, groups hope to learn how to make their predictions more reliable, says Bjorn Stevens, an MPIM director who has pushed for more transparency. And in a study that will be submitted by year’s end, six U.S. modeling centers will disclose their tuning strategies—showing that many are quite different.
Indeed, whether climate scientists like to admit it or not, nearly every model has been calibrated precisely to the 20th century climate records—otherwise it would have ended up in the trash. “It’s fair to say all models have tuned it,” says Isaac Held, a scientist at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, another prominent modeling center, in Princeton, New Jersey.
For years, climate scientists had been mum in public about their “secret sauce”: What happened in the models stayed in the models. The taboo reflected fears that climate contrarians would use the practice of tuning to seed doubt about models—and, by extension, the reality of human-driven warming. “The community became defensive,” Stevens says. “It was afraid of talking about things that they thought could be unfairly used against them.” . . . .
JC reflections
Well finally, we are seeing climate modeling move in a healthy direction, that has the potential to improve climate models, clarify uncertainties, and so build understanding of and trust in the models.
Its about time: the response of the climatariat to my writings about climate models circa 2009-2011 was to toss me out of the tribe, dismiss me as a ‘denier’, etc.
I find it absolutely remarkable that this statement was published in Science:
The taboo reflected fears that climate contrarians would use the practice of tuning to seed doubt about models—and, by extension, the reality of human-driven warming. “The community became defensive,” Stevens says. “It was afraid of talking about things that they thought could be unfairly used against them.”
This reflects pathetic behavior by the climate modelers (and I don’t blame Bjorn Stevens here; he is one of the good guys). You may recall what I wrote in my post Climategate essay Towards rebuilding trust:
In their misguided war against the skeptics, the CRU emails reveal that core research values became compromised. . . .
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