Author Archives: niclewis

A major problem with the Resplandy et al. ocean heat uptake paper

Posted on November 6, 2018 | 410 comments

by Nic Lewis

Obviously doubtful claims about new research regarding ocean content reveal how unquestioning Nature, climate scientists and the MSM are. Continue reading →

410 Comments

Posted in Data and observations, Oceans, Uncertainty

Remarkable changes to carbon emission budgets in the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C

Posted on October 18, 2018 | 121 comments

by Nic Lewis

A close reading of Chapters 1 and 2 of the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15) reveals some interesting changes from the IPCC 5th Assessment Report (AR5), and other science-relevant statements. This article highlights statements in SR15 relating to carbon emission budgets for meeting the 1.5°C and 2°C targets.

It seems fairly extraordinary to me that the AR5 post-2010 carbon budget for 1.5°C, which was only published four years ago, has in effect been now been increased by ~700 GtCO2 – equal to 21st century emissions to date – despite SR15’s projections of future warming being based very largely on the transient climate response to cumulative emissions (TCRE) range exhibited by the models used in AR5. Continue reading →

121 Comments

Posted in climate models, IPCC

Warming patterns are unlikely to explain low historical estimates of climate sensitivity

Posted on September 5, 2018 | 150 comments

By Nic Lewis

A critique of of a new paper by Andrews  et al., Accounting for changing temperature patterns increases historical estimates of climate sensitivity.

Continue reading →

150 Comments

Posted in climate models, Sensitivity & feedbacks

Why Dessler et al.’s critique of energy-budget climate sensitivity estimation is mistaken

Posted on April 30, 2018 | 509 comments

By Nic Lewis

Plain language summary

  • A new paper by Andrew Dessler et al. claims, based on 100 simulations of the historical period (1850 to date) by the MPI‑ESM1.1 climate model, that estimates of climate sensitivity using the energy-budget method can vary widely due to internal climate system variability.
  • I calculated what effect the uncertainty implied by the internal variability affecting the MPI‑ESM1.1 simulations had on the distribution of the primary climate sensitivity estimate in the recent Lewis & Curry energy-budget paper.
  • The result was a marginal narrowing of the Lewis & Curry sensitivity estimate. This is because the allowance for internal variability by Lewis & Curry is larger than internal variability in MPI‑ESM1.1.
  • Since historical period energy-budget sensitivity estimates are much more  imprecise for other reasons, internal variability contributes little to their total uncertainty; it is an unimportant factor.
  • Nothing in the new Dessler et al. paper indicates that the Lewis & Curry energy-budget climate sensitivity estimates are likely to be biased low.

Continue reading →

509 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Impact of recent forcing and ocean heat uptake data on estimates of climate sensitivity

Posted on April 24, 2018 | 283 comments

by Nic Lewis

We have now updated the LC15 paper with a new paper that has been published in the Journal of Climate “The impact of recent forcing and ocean heat uptake data on estimates of climate sensitivity“.  The paper also addresses critiques of LC15.

Continue reading →

283 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks, Uncategorized