(CNSNews.com) – Global temperatures collected in five official databases confirm that there has been no statistically significant global warming for the past 17 years, according to Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH).
Christy's findings are contrary to predictions made by 73 computer models cited in the United Nation’s latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (5AR).
Christy told CNSNews that he analyzed all 73 models used in the 5AR and not one accurately predicted that the Earth’s temperature would remain flat since Oct. 1, 1996. (See Temperatures v Predictions 1976-2013.pdf)
“I compared the models with observations in the key area – the tropics – where the climate models showed a real impact of greenhouse gases,” Christy explained. “I wanted to compare the real world temperatures with the models in a place where the impact would be very clear.” (See Tropical Mid-Troposphere Graph.pdf)
Using datasets of actual temperatures recorded by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS), the United Kingdom’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research at the University of East Anglia (Hadley-CRU), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), satellites measuring atmospheric and deep oceanic temperatures, and a remote sensor system in California, Christy found that “all show a lack of warming over the past 17 years.”
“All 73 models’ predictions were on average three to four times what occurred in the real world,” Christy pointed out. “The closest was a Russian model that predicted a one-degree increase."
“October 1st marks the 17th year of no global warming significantly different than zero,” agreed Dr. Patrick Michaels, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for the Study of Science. “And those 17 years correspond to the largest period of CO2 emissions by far over any other 17-year period in history.”
The 5AR's "Summary for Policymakers," released last week, acknowledged that “the rate of warming over the past 15 years…is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951,” before concluding that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” (See IPCC 5th Assessment Report.pdf)
“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid 20th century,” the IPCC report noted, adding that “continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system.”
However, the same report also acknowledged that there are “differences between simulated and observed trends over periods as short as 10 to 15 years.”
“It’s a very embarrassing result for the climate models used in the IPCC report,” Christy told CNSNews. “Our own UAH measurement of a 0.1 degree Celsius increase per decade in the upper atmosphere was actually the warmest of all the datasets.”
Reaching the 17-year mark with no significant warming is a milestone because a climate change research team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory defined it as the minimum length of time necessary to “separate human-caused global warming from the ‘noise’ of purely natural climate fluctuations,” according to a 2011 press release.
Michaels pointed out that 18 separate experiments published since Jan. 1, 2011 show that the IPCC’s climate models are off by 46 percent when it comes to temperature CO2 sensitivity. “The pressure to warm the atmosphere by CO2 has somehow been cancelled out completely by natural forces,” he said. “Surface temperature is simply not as sensitive to changes in CO2 as was assumed by the climate modeling community.”
“Nature bats last,” Michaels added. “And Nature came up in the 9th inning 17 years ago.”
Seventeen years without a temperature increase is also at odds with a report by the United Kingdom’s Met Office that said “global mean surface temperatures rose rapidly from the 1970s, but have been relatively flat over the most recent 15 years to 2013." (See Met Office July 2013.PDF)
“The Met Office simply didn’t go back 17 years,” Christy said to explain the two-year discrepancy.
When CNSNews asked Christy how the IPCC could claim “95 percent certainty” that human activity is causing global warming when it failed to predict that global temperatures would remain flat over the past 17 years, he replied: “I am baffled that the confidence increases when the performance of your models is conclusively failing. I cannot understand that methodology.”
When asked how useful the just-released IPCC report will be in predicting future global temperatures, he said: “Not very. When 73 out of 73 [climate models] miss the point and predict temperatures that are significantly above the real world, they cannot be used as scientific tools, and definitely not for public policy decision-making.”
In 2012, Christy testified before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, telling senators that “the recent anomalous weather can’t be blamed on carbon dioxide.”
"We've had 17 years of no global warming, yet we have an energy policy right now that continues to harm American communities and will lead to much higher electricity prices all based on the 'fact' that the world is warming," Daniel Kish, vice-president of the Institute for Energy Research, told CNSNews.com.
"Yet they cannot explain why all their projections are wrong. They're putting coal miners out of work all based on a 17-year history that doesn't exist."