TCO has inquired about whether there is a legitimate purpose for using off-center PCs. I can’t think of any valid purpose. Here’s a good reason why not from our E&E article, where we showed how the MBH algorithm turned series upside down if it improved the hockey stick fit. Here’s how we wrote it up.
Here is some interesting information from an Oman speleothem is a proxy for Indian Ocean monsoon levels. One of the most influential proxies in Moberg [2005] is Oman coldwater diatoms and there is a connection. It may also shed some light on Himalaya ice cores, which also measure dO18 in monsoone precitation.
A number of people are citing the von Storch and Zorita paper as somehow showing that the erroneous MBH98 method did not "matter". I stated previously that the VZ paper indicated that they had inaccurately replicated the hockey stick algorithm – which made their results irrelevant. I have since had some correspondence with von Storch, […]
Roger Pielke notes that the hockey stick debate has been widely discussed and has issued a challenge to Mann and myself to summarize why the hockey stick debate should matter to anyone. A fair question. He characterizes the latest exchanges over realclimate posting policy in very unflattering terms to all parties involved (including myself). While […]
Martin van Calmthout (who boo’ed the award to Marcel Crok) has published a long article in today’s Volkskrant in Holland. I have enclosed a somewhat tidied machine-translation from altavista.com; I don’t speak Dutch and don’t vouch for anything. (update: Hans Erren edited a prior version and his version follows). The Dutch version follows the English […]
I attempted to post the enclosed post at realclimate yesterday, which was rejected. The post was to a topic, where McKitrick and I were directly criticized, and limited to scientific matters.
The first step in the J98 procedure is the standardization of all series based on 1901-1950 and then taking an average. I’m not a big fan of short-period standard deviations (not just me, but see also Trenberth [1984]). All of these series are at least 300 years long, so there’s no need for 50-year standard […]
Jones et al [1998]] did not archive their proxy set as used. I requested this information from Jones this year and was refused, although he did send me two series (Lenca, Law Dome) not locatable anywhere in a public archive about a year ago. Here is some background on the proxies in Jones et al […]
It looks like there is a huge cock-up in the von Storch and Zorita Comment, which completely screws up their simulations. We alluded to a defect in their methodology in our Reply, but I didn’t realize just how big a defect it was.
I’m working away at Jones et al [1998]. Here’s an interesting diagram from Jones et al [Science, 2001] , which purports to provide confidence intervals for the J98 reconstruction (blue). There’s (at least) one really strange feature in this diagram. See if you can pick it out. Original Caption: Fig. 2. (A) Northern Hemisphere surface […]
Climate Audit 
Some more on von Storch and Zorita
A number of people are citing the von Storch and Zorita paper as somehow showing that the erroneous MBH98 method did not "matter". I stated previously that the VZ paper indicated that they had inaccurately replicated the hockey stick algorithm – which made their results irrelevant. I have since had some correspondence with von Storch, […]