New Article Highlights Deficiencies In The Global Climate Models – Luo Et Al 2011

I was alerted to an article in Nature (h/t Ryan Maue) which has several remarkable statements.  The article is

Jing-Jia Luo, 2011: Ocean dynamics not required? Nature Volume 477, Pages: 544–546 Date published:
(29 September 2011) doi:10.1038/477544a

and is with respect to the article

Clement, Amy, Pedro DiNezio, Clara Deser, 2011: Rethinking the Ocean’s Role in the Southern Oscillation. J. Climate, 24, 4056–4072. doi: 10.1175/2011JCLI3973.1

 

Jing-Jia includes the text [highlight added]

“However, on decadal and longer timescales, ocean dynamics seem to be less important than was thought: the magnitude of the variance in SST in the climate mode observed by Clement et al.2 in their ocean-slab models is comparable to that observed in reality. When the authors coupled full ocean dynamics to the atmosphere in their models, this actually weakened the decadal and multidecadal variability by constraining the variance of tropical climate to interannual timescales.”

“One limitation of the authors’s findings is that many of their climate models are severely flawed when simulating the period and magnitude of ENSO. The misrepresentation of ENSO dynamics in such models may preclude an accurate separation of dynamic and thermodynamic coupling effects. Moreover, most climate models erroneously predict the existence of an intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) — a band near the Equator where the trade winds from the two hemispheres converge — in the South Pacific, in addition to the real one observed north of the Equator. This problem is known as double ITCZ bias.….”

This article illustrates that not only have the global models shown NO skill at predicting changes in climate statistics over multi-decadal time scales, they still do not even skillfully simulate important components of the current global climate.

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