Another failing prediction of doom

Something amusing (or perhaps absurd?) that I noticed the other day.

An old article in The Australian from October 10, 2013: Climate change tipping point revealed by study published in Nature [2].

THE dreaded climate-change "tipping point", when changes to weather patterns will become irreversible, has been identified. And it is terrifying.

Starting in about a decade, Kingston, Jamaica, will probably be off-the-charts hot - permanently. Other places will soon follow. Singapore in 2028. Mexico City in 2031. Cairo in 2036. Phoenix and Honolulu in 2043.

Australia will not be far behind, with dates ranging from 2038 in Sydney to 2049 in Adelaide.

Virtually the whole world will have changed by 2050.

This, as usual, is all based on computer models:

To arrive at their projections, the researchers used weather observations, computer models and other data to calculate the point at which every year from then on will be warmer than the hottest year ever recorded over the past 150 years.

So how well are they doing? They give a long list of cities and the dreaded year when all h*** breaks loose in the poor blighted district. Examples:

Melbourne 2045

Sydney 2038

Perth 2042

Adelaide 2049

Conveniently far enough out that we'll all have forgotten this piece of idiocy when the prediction fails to come to pass. But someone didn't do their proofing well enough! They let slip one near-term prediction:

Manokwari (West Papua) 2020

Well we're nearly half way there. Things should be getting pret-ty sticky in poor Manokwari by now. So how is it panning out?

Manokwari is smack next to Rendani, which is the only place with temperature data recorded in the NOAA-GHCN global data bank. Even that is sketchy:

The grey line is the data, the red line a 12-month running average. The long straight bits on the grey line are missing data. You can probably see the outcome already, but let's amplify the last part where the supposed "end of the world" disaster is developing:

The flat tops at 35.4C look to be an artifact in the measuring equipment. Not promising as the basis for a sky-is-falling alarm. But what has happened since 2013 on the way to a 2020 armagedon?

It is always thus: Panic and alarm, then go quiet when it doesn't turn out as advertised.