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Climatic Models incomplete - poor understanding of mid level clouds cited

By Eco Guy 10:13pm 24th November 2010
Clouds play a major role in the climate-change equation, but they are the least-understood variable in the sky, observes a Texas A&M University geoscientist, who says mid-level clouds are especially understudied.

To quote the article:

"Only in the past few years have we focused on the physical properties of mid-level clouds. This means that previous climate models are incomplete,"

Therefore the results of previous climate models (i.e. those used in IPCC reports) could be incomplete if they did not have proper modeling of mid-level clouds?? i.e. this is likely the case.

"We do not have a unified definition, so the scientific community can't look at the statistics with a shared level of understanding. Also, because mid-level clouds are formed either from water droplets or ice crystals or a combination of both, they can be more difficult to model. "

So even if you could model them now, there is a basic problem of a lack consistent theory and definition that precludes comparing like with like. This with the likelyhood (as expressed in the article) that such clouds play an important role in the climatic system and hence climate change, means that the previous and current generation of climate models have a much higher degree of inaccuracy than was previously thought.

Food for thought isn't it?...

Just in time for Cancun again. As I have said all along climate models are no substitute for directly observed and researched events and interactions; reality is the benchmark not the model.

BTW recently a Professor Khmelinskii had a paper rejected from both Nature and Science which concluded:

  "the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis, embodied in the IPCC climate models, is not a valid theory, due to irreparable fundamental flaws in the models, namely, their failure to include complete physics. "

The rejections were:

"we are unable to conclude that your paper provides the sort of firm conceptual advance in our understanding of climate - or the underlying factors influencing climate change and/or variation "

and

" Because your manuscript was not given a high priority rating during the initial screening process, we will not be able to send it out for in-depth review. Although your analysis is interesting, we feel that the scope and focus of your paper make it more appropriate for a more specialized journal. We are therefore notifying you so that you can seek publication elsewhere."



Basically the 1st response seems to indicate that challenging the validity of a theory is no longer considered 'advancing our understanding of climate'; even if that challenge may be indeed valid. The 2nd is more even handed, but seems to be denying the reviewers the chance to actually rate all that is received themselves.

Related Content Tags: climate change, modeling, cancun

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