We recently reported on a study of a century’s worth of Spanish rainfall records that contradicted climate model projections that rainfall should be trending down, because no such trend shows up in that darn pesky data. And this week we report on a new study in Nature by a team of dozens of scientists looking at long term rainfall records from across the Mediterranean. The study begins: “State-of-the-art climate models project a substantial decline in precipitation for the Mediterranean region in the future.” So you just know where this one is going. They continue: “Supporting this notion, several studies based on observed precipitation data spanning recent decades have suggested a decrease in Mediterranean precipitation with some attributing a large fraction of this change to anthropogenic influences.” Hmmm. A short segment of data supports the theory so there you go. Except in the new study they put together the largest and longest Mediterranean rainfall data set ever assembled, running from 1871 to 2020, and found that despite “significant multi-decadal and interannual variability” there were no trends up or down either annually or in individual seasons. Nor were there trends in droughts. Even so, the authors found half a loaf for the modelers. As you should if you like getting grants.
The newly-developed annual average rainfall record looks like this:
Whether they look at the whole record or take shorter and shorter segments at the end they couldn’t find a statistically significant trend. However they reported that they could sort of reconcile this with climate models.
They noted that on average the climate models all report that rainfall should be declining. But the average hides a lot of variability among the models. In fact individual models are all over the place. Which means the modelers don’t actually know what is going to happen.
So when they look at the whole spread of model projections it covers every possible outcome. On which basis they conclude that “it is noteworthy that the observed trends fall within the broad spectrum of trends produced by the models, encompassing both positive and negative values.” Right. The models say that anything can happen, and wouldn’t you know it, something happened!
Or didn’t. Namely a trend towards more drying didn’t show up in the most complete data set ever assembled. One more climate alarm washed out.
“ They noted that on average the climate models all report that rainfall should be declining.”
Actually global warming should increase the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere (7% per degree) on our 70% water covered planet, and thus produce more rainfall. Except that 5 mm of rain out of a 70 mm rain is generally less than the variation between two rain gauges a hundred meters apart, and would you really know if you had 15 five mm showers this year instead of 14 ? So this claim of “declining” is actually junk cherry picking not-even-sciency speculation.
There is very little hope for climate grants from Washington DC so I think that grant demand from Ottawa and Brussels will be increasing. I wonder who will win the trade war, Carney and LaGarde or Trump.....care to place a bet?
Thomas
In the near term, the US will lose less than its trade partners but if the trade war persists and becomes enshrined longer term, the world will continue with increased trade outside the US which will morph into a more Peronist state. A global recession doesn't produce "winners".
John, those knowing in advance what will happen (the in-crowd and those pulling the strings) will definitely win big time. Just look at the recent tariff shenanigans. Announcement A: stock prices drop, announcement B: stock prices recover, people telling puppet T to produce A and B know when to sell and when to buy, making massive (many billions) in profits in a very short time. This can then be spent on buying new puppets for the next election!
Does a record dump of snow in mid April mean climate change is responsible? Then there's a record 30 inches or is it 40 inches in Switzerland just before Easter. (the next article after this one)> https://www.sott.net/article/499081-Baqueira-Beret-ski-resort-in-Spain-records-40-cms-15-7-inches-of-mid-April-snow