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A November 11, 2013 press release by Austria’s national weather service, the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG), somehow got by me. And not surprisingly it was completely ignored by the German-language mainstream media. It’s titled: “Slower temperature increase: climate models under scrutiny“.

In the introduction the ZAMG writes:

If one compares the temperature development of the last 15 years to the simulations from the new climate model generation, then one sees a substantial deviation between reality and model: the so-called temperature hiatus.”

Air temperature is the preferred parameter that experts use to gauge climate change. On the hiatus the ZAMG writes, “In the last 15 years there has been a clear weakening in the global temperature rise; only 3 of 114 climate model simulations account for it (Figure 1).”

Figure 1: Change in global near-surface temperature relative to the 1986–2005 period from observation data (black) and model simulations (coloured) (IPCC 2013).

As possible causes for the unexpected temperature hiatus, the ZAMG cites: 1) the 11-year solar cycle, 2) volcanic activity, 3) internal climate variability and 4) man-made aerosols. Keep in mind that man-made aerosols have long been dubiously used as the preferred wild card to explain away deviations between models and observations. If there’s a misfit, no problem! Just adjust the aerosol weighting in the model until it there’s a fit! Never mind small details like reality.

Interestingly, the ZAMG also brings up global winter temperature trends and provides the following chart.

Figure 2: Winter linear trends of near surface temperatures for the period 1987–2010 from CRUTEM3 data in in degrees C per decade (Cohen u.a. 2012b).

Note how the northern hemisphere winters are cooling dramatically. Ed Caryl recently wrote a piece on this and a couple of readers got a bit pissy about the claim wintertime temps are cooling. Well, here’s more proof that they indeed really are cooling. What more do you want?

So why are the models deviating so starkly from reality? The ZAMG writes:

Why the global climate models are by far over-estimating the current temperature development – and thus obviously are not taking the processes behind it correctly – is the topic of discussion and is now the subject of ongoing research. According to the latest expert report, it could be an error in missing or incorrect radiative forcing, or a false reaction by the climate model to external drives. Moreover, some of the climate models are likely reacting too much to the concentrations of greenhouse gases.”

In layman’s terms: The modelers have no clue what’s wrong, and they are not even close to properly modeling the climate. The sheer simplicity of their models, when compared to the enormous complexity of the climate system, is a joke.

The Austrian ZAMG concludes:

The research results of the last year make it ever clearer that natural fluctuations in climate are substantial. The current temperature hiatus shows that the climate system is not understood in its full complexity and that the climate models still are not adequate.”

Really makes you wonder about the scientists who claim to be 95% certain. That 5% uncertainty is looming larger than ever.