A PAPER from the International Warming Coverage Basis says that a current shift in methodology by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC) has led to deceptive claims about will increase in climate extremes. The overview by physicist Dr Ralph Alexander finds that IPCC claims are largely unsupported by observational proof.
Dr Alexander says: ‘On virtually each sort of excessive climate, with the potential exception of heatwaves, the proof for important modifications is scant. However the newest IPCC report has launched novel “attribution” statistics and now insists that issues are getting worse. It’s yet one more case of scientists attempting to scare the general public into compliance . . . The mistaken perception that climate extremes are worsening due to local weather change is extra a notion, fostered by media protection, than actuality. The IPCC’s new statistical technique is taking part in an unworthy half in bringing this sorry state of affairs to move.’
That is the paper’s abstract:
‘This paper compares empirical observations of utmost climate occasions with their protection within the 2021 Sixth Evaluation Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC). The conclusions of AR6 are contrasted with observational information described in current analysis papers and reviews, significantly in relation to droughts, tropical cyclones, heatwaves (together with marine heatwaves) and chilly extremes. The paper additionally covers main floods, tornadoes, wildfires and coral bleaching, with a brief replace of the dialogue of catastrophe threat evaluation in my report final yr.
‘In a shift of its earlier stance, the IPCC claims, for the primary time, that local weather change is now affecting many climate extremes all around the globe. Whereas this isn’t true and opposite to the availready proof, AR6 does comply with earlier IPCC reviews in not making any robust statements attributing excessive climate to world warming.
‘The IPCC declare that agricultural and ecological droughts are rising is mistaken. A number of recent analysis research have confirmed the shortage of any long-term pattern in drought worldwide over not less than a millennium, with no proof that fashionable world warming has performed any position up to now.
‘AR6 hyperlinks tropical cyclones (hurricanes, typhoons and tropical storms) to world warming with a press release that the proportion of main tropical cyclones has elevated throughout the globe since 1980. Though this assertion seems to be right, a 2021 research discovered that the commentary merely displays enhancements in measurement capabilities since 1970, and is unlikely to be a real local weather pattern. Hurricanes general present a reducing pattern across the globe, and the frequency of landfalling hurricanes of any power (Classes 1 via 5) has not modified for not less than 50 years.
‘Claims of strengthened proof for attribution of heatwaves to world warming, and their extra frequent incidence, might be questioned as a result of information earlier than 1950 is essentially ignored in AR6. Within the US, for which there are detailed heatwave data again to 1900, a fairly totally different image emerges. The Hadley temperature compilation, which underlies the IPCC place that heatwaves are on the rise globally, must be examined on the a lot bigger US dataset to see if it might probably reproduce the US information profile. Moreover, the trendy heatwave pattern in AR6 is artificially exaggerated as a result of the 1950 begin date used is in the course of a 30-year interval of worldwide cooling, from 1940 to 1970.
‘There isn’t any convincing empirical proof for the AR6 declaration that the frequency of marine heatwaves has doubled for the reason that Eighties. As a result of sea-surface temperature information from the pre-satellite period was unreliable and sparse, earlier marine heatwaves had been possible missed. And the magazinenitudes of present marine heatwaves are probably overestimated attributable to uncertainties within the marine datasets.
‘An announcement in AR6 that chilly extremes have change into much less frequent and extreme can also be mistaken. Observational proof exhibits that chilly extremes are rising and should have change into extra severe, a truth even acknowledged by the IPCC’s sister UN company, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
‘And, though AR6 wrongly states that coral bleaching and mortality occasions have elevated in current many years, the report fails to notice that such phenomena should not new. There’s empirical proof for bleaching of Australia’s Nice Barrier Reef relationship again to 1575, lengthy earlier than fashionable world warming started. That is one other instance of the IPCC’s neglect of historical past.
‘Correctly, AR6 doesn’t change the IPCC’s earlier place on floods, tornadoes or wildfires. However its conclusions about droughts, tropical cyclones, heatwaves and chilly extremes can’t be justified by precise observations.’
The GWPF invited the Royal Society and the Met Workplace to overview this paper, and to submit a response to be printed as an appendix to it. No reply was obtained.
