‘Potentially serious problems’. Advisable to view the linked blog post before commenting, it’s quite short.
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See, I told you so — says Roy Spencer.
One of the most fundamental requirements of any physics-based model of climate change is that it must conserve mass and energy.
This is partly why I (along with Danny Braswell and John Christy) have been using simple 1-dimensional climate models that have simplified calculations and where conservation is not a problem.
. . .
Now, I just stumbled upon a paper from 2021 (Irving et al., A Mass and Energy Conservation Analysis of Drift in the CMIP6 Ensemble) which describes significant problems in the latest (CMIP5 and CMIP6) models regarding not only energy conservation in the ocean but also at the top-of-atmosphere (TOA, thus affecting global warming rates) and even the water vapor budget of the atmosphere (which represents the largest component of the global greenhouse effect).
These represent potentially serious problems when it comes to our reliance on climate models to guide energy policy. [Talkshop note – author’s emphasis]
It boggles my mind that conservation of mass and energy were not requirements of all models before their results were released decades ago.
Full post here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
[…] Posted on August 22, 2023 by HiFast SITYS: Climate models do not conserve mass or energy – Roy Spencer, PhD. […]
Every new climate science discovery is new knowledge of things that have gone on for hundreds, thousands, and millions of years, while climate changed with alternating warmer and colder time periods. Now, in the coldest warm period of the last hundreds, thousands, and millions of years, they celebrate every new discovery of old natural processes with some twist of alarm never letting a piece of new knowledge go to waste in promoting their agendas.
In one article this was written: ’Ice shelves hold back Antarctica’s glaciers from adding to sea levels, but they’re crumbling’
This was written: “we show these ice shelves have significantly reduced in area over the last 25 years due to more and more icebergs breaking off. Overall, the net loss of ice is about 6,000 billion tons since 1997”
That is equivalent to a huge IR out when that ice was formed, thousands or millions of years before, and is therefore equivalent to many watts per meter squared of cooling that happened in modern times as a result of thawing of the ice which had been formed in a much warmer time. Ice formed and sequestered in warmest times is responsible for cooling by thawing ice in cooler times and this warm time is cooler than all past warmer times.
They wrote about the net loss of 6,000 billion tons of ice since 1997 and this is just in one region of Antarctica. That is equivalent to much cooling of the oceans, just like ice we formed in our freezer cools our ice chest, days or weeks or months later at the beach. Yet, cooling by thawing ice is nowhere in the Climate System Energy Balance Charts. Cooling by thawing ice is nowhere in the energy balance theory for the cooling during a major ice age when much of the northern hemisphere is covered by ice that has to thaw every summer and much even in winter.
So, They Wrote:
Seasonal change in Antarctic ice sheet movement observed for first time – but what does it mean?
When ice that was formed during much warmer times, hundreds, thousands, and/or millions of years ago, thaws in modern times, the cooling by thawing ice must be included in Energy Balance Charts and Theory and Models and attributed to the IR out that occurred during much warmer times, hundreds, thousands, and/or millions of years ago.
Heat energy is stored in oceans in tropical regions and transported by ocean currents to polar regions where Evaporation and IR out in warmest times is responsible for cooling that actually occurs during colder times, hundreds, thousands, and/or millions of years later, as in now in modern warm times that are cooler than millions of years ago due to the thawing of the sequestered ice.
They should not write that much ice is thawing, or they should account for the cooling by the thawing ice.
If Climate Balance does not properly include the IR out forming ice in warmest times that causes cooling by thawing ice in coldest times, the theory and models and climate projections are not valid, they cause harm from pretending to fix something they have too little knowledge of.
The Climate is changing in dynamic cycles which are balanced over the long term, but Climate is not in static balance most of the time.
In warmest times, the more IR out does not result in colder Climate at that time. The more IR out builds sequestered ice.
In coldest times, the less IR out does not result in a warmer climate at that time. Part of the difference is Albedo, which is considered, but part of the difference is cooling from thawing ice, which is not considered.
the models are so out of whack with respect to reality that they have to “adjust” them AND the data until things line up (in current time). One test they continually fail is predicting the past.
For those not aware of this test, you train your model on most but not all the data. You hold back some 10% to 20% of the most recent data. Now you let the model predict the future values which are actually our generally recent past. Then, you compare the predictions with what actually happened. No matter what part of the time stream you use, these models will ALWAYS fail. If they over train it until it works on recent data, then if you move back 50 years or so as the data terminus the output will crash and burn.
[from the horse’s mouth:] “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” – IPCC TAR WG1, Working Group I: The Scientific Basis
The Old Farmer’s Almanac is generally way more accurate.
stpaulchuck says: “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
I say: The climate system has always alternated warmer and colder time periods, this is a warm time and it will last a few hundred years and be followed by a colder time. The climate system is considered chaotic because people do not understand why it did what it did. The long term climate system has been and is consistent, warm periods will alternate with cold periods.
The length and temperatures of these alternating cycles have changed. This is explained by ice core and other historical records.
The major barrier to better general understanding is the reluctance of the different factions to openly discuss and debate with any they disagree with.
Scientists, people, understand the storage of energy, when it is heat energy. Scientists say that cold is just the lack of energy and cold is not scientifically understood. This all falls apart when the cold energy is stored in ice. Cold energy is not a scientifically understood topic. Yet, we all form ice in ice makers which remove energy and radiate the energy away or we buy ice that someone else has removed the energy that turned water into ice, or we scoop up ice nature has provided for us. We then use that ice to keep things cold as ice thaws. Nature does that, nature most often starts with water vapor, water evaporates, and water vapor is transported up to lower pressure and colder altitudes where it is transformed to water or ice with the removal of energy that is radiated out. Some of the water and ice is dropped to earth where it does immediate cooling. In cold places, ice is dropped where it is sequestered for long periods of time and is spread on land or pushed into the oceans where it does cool the climate, many years later. This is not understood and not considered in climate energy balance.
I really don’t understand why people worry about the details of the models when the models literally cannot work. It’s like fussing about the colour of a homeopathic remedy.
Since all models are wrong the scientist must be alert to what is importantly wrong. It is inappropriate to be concerned about mice when there are tigers abroad. – George Box.
The main ‘serious problem’ is that national policies and mandates for ‘action’ are still being based on the outpourings of these clearly inadequate climate models.