This will be message 600 (or more) in this thread, which was supposed to be just a temporary repository for messages. Is it about time to clean it up?

Of course I think there are a couple of thread-worthy sections here. But I realize your time is limited. Would you like people to mention message numbers which might be the starts of interesting threads? Or is that too much work for you to worry about?

I’m not sure if this is the right sequence for this request, but it seemed like the best place for it.

Can anybody point point me to any known predictions made by a GCM with subsequent measurments of predictive accuracy? I’m not looking here for either “hindcasting” or holdout / validation sets, but actual forecasts made on date X for some date after X with subsequent measurments of accuracy (something like an empirical skill measurment).

Thanks,
Dana

Select “TAO Monthly Equator-Depth Temps” and “large”, then click “Animate”. On the next page click the arrow to start.

What this shows is a temperature cross-section of the Pacific Ocean at the Equator. The red on the upper left is the edge of the Warm Pool. The blue at the bottom is the cold deeper part of the Pacific Ocean.

The upper chart only shows 500m depth, while the Ocean goes all the way down 4,000m. So, mentally extrapolate the blue area downwards another 8 times. That shows how little warm ocean water there is, compared to the vast coldness below.

The upper animation shows the progress of El Nino and La Nina this year. In a sense these are instances in which the Warm Pool sloshes eastward for a while, then retreats. Wind causes the sloshing.

The thin yellow line is probably the thermocline, which is the place where the warm water and cold water meet. If you look closely and use a bit of imagination, you can see ripples and waves traveling along the thermocline. These are called “gravity waves”. Gravity waves affect the height of the thermocline (and thus mixing), and can sometimes alter the flow of major warm currents. They are important but hard to observe.

Verry good UC. I especially liked categories 3,4 and 5.

My suggested categories:

Best reach and rationalization to blame AGW. (could be separated into two categories)

“The Mann” Award – for the most daedalian and convoluted methods description.

Best “Homer” review

and last, but not least;

The AGW Mascot award – Polar bears are hands down winners this year, tree frogs won last last year.

In the spirit of the season why not add this category:

Most alarmist paper of 2006

On a slighty serious note, it would be most helpful for those of us buried in paper to discover the:

Best overview paper of the year 2006

I am not a statistician -award

Best new statistical data handling method

Most cited unpublished paper

Most cited rejected paper

Smoother of the year (9-year or 21-year Gaussian?)

Mystery of the year

Lowest, yet most significant reported R

(Don’t take this too seriously, Happy New Year!)

22 yrs after deluge, they fear more

Mohammed Safi Shamsi

Sagar Island, Sundarban

For the past two decades, Arjun Jana has lived the life of an “environmental refugee” in Sagar island. He was forced to leave home in Lohachara island, one of the many islets on the Sundarban delta, when the surging sea waters swamped his farmland.

Now 75, Jana’s migration to Sagar brought him to safer land. But it also made him poorer for the rest of his life. “People don’t offer me any permanent job,” Jana told Newsline in his refugee shanty on Sagar island on Tuesday.

“They believe that making me work at this age is a sin. (So) our only source of income is assisting people as labourers.”

There’s no old-age allowance from the local administration for either Jana or his wife. And apart from a piece of land allotted to him years ago, and his thatched hut, the couple has nothing that they can call “ours”.

Close to Jana’s hut is another witness to the misery after the rising sea submerged the islands of Lohachara and Bedford 22 years ago. Divakar Bhandari was in his early-30s when the catastrophe occurred.

“I went to Lohachara island when I was 12 “¢’‚¬? in search of land,” Bhandari, now 55, said. “I and my wife had five bighas of land that we tilled.

“The sea had been eating away our island with every passing day. And then, one day, it engulfed everything that had remained untouched till then “¢’‚¬? our home, fields, the cattle… everything.” (SOURCE)

This occurred two decades ago, and it’s big news today? Man, you have to be pretty desperate for a disaster to hype that one … an island in the delta of the river system that drains half of India and the Himalayas, that was subjected to annual flooding, shifting river channels, loss of freshwater, clearcutting, and recurrent typhoons, washed away 22 years ago … EVERYBODY PANIC!

w.