Comments on: Re-Visiting CCSP 1.1 on Lapse Rate Trends

By: Kenneth Fritsch

Kenneth Fritsch — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:19:53 +0000

Re: Shallow Climate (#17), There is always the option of framing some pertinent questions with regards to what you are having difficulty understanding. I was suprised, given the criticism, that I saw none of that in this thread.

By: Shallow Climate

Shallow Climate — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:50:13 +0000

Patrick M. and Ivan–
Yes, thanks. I suppose, in my ideal world, my edenic world, Mr. McIntyre would write his posts however it would please him to do so, and then someone else (such as one of you), in your comment, would REWRITE the entire post in a more comprehensible (I won’t say “dumbed down”) way. That would be a win-win for us all. So I suppose.

By: Ivan

Ivan — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:59:41 +0000

Shallow Climate and Joachim,

can I try to summarize, although I am also just an interested layman, and by no means “advanced reader”. As far as I could see Steve tried to replicate Santer’s results allegedly showing good agreement between models and observations in tropics (models predict vertical amplification i.e. increase in rate of warming as we go up in the atmosphere, so called tropical “hot-spot”). Steve reproduced predictions of climate models for difference between surface lower and mid-tropospheric trends on one hand and surface data on the other, and compared that difference with observations of the same difference, that show very different picture. Instead increase in amplification with altitude, observations show lower rates of warming up in atmosphere than at the surface, and what is specially important, less amplification in the mid than in the lower troposphere.

By: Patrick M.

Patrick M. — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:28:36 +0000

Re: Shallow Climate (#11), Steve has noted on other occasions that at times he treats this blog as if it is an open diary of his thoughts, in which case he is writing as much for himself as for the more advanced readers. Usually at some point someone kindly summarizes and translates the concepts for the rest of us.

By: jae

jae — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:30:41 +0000

It seems that Santer is now busy making movies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7zMQII8qOo&feature=related

Gag me!

By: Micky C (MC)

Micky C (MC) — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:11:28 +0000

This may be premature as you will post it up tomorrow but did you see any substantial reduction in the trend autocorrelation, for both models and observed-derived data, using the difference between surface and troposphere?

By: Shallow Climate

Shallow Climate — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:08:53 +0000

Joachim (again)–
Many years ago, when I was at UCLA, I attended a guest seminar by Richard Feynman. I was struck not only by his enthusiasm for his subject but also by how well he communicated, as I, a chemist, could understand him quite easily: I a chemist in an audience of physicists.
(Hmm, maybe I’ll get a reprimand here from Steve–er, Mr. McIntyre–for being OT. We’ll have to see.)

By: Shallow Climate

Shallow Climate — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:56:58 +0000

Joachim (5-18-09, 2:36)–
For what it’s worth to you (or not), lately I have the same impression as you: the writing is more arcane, more abstruse, more dense. It seems to me as though Mr. McIntyre (I have never met him–can’t call him “Steve”) is writing here for the most kindred in background, of which I am not one. Of course it’s his blog: let him write as he wants. So even though I am often left in the dust by his writing, I still put money in the tip jar, as I much appreciate his work and his blog. And, for what it’s worth, that, conversely, is a big part of the reason why I always like Willis Eschenbach’s guest-posts here, as he writes both humbly and understandably: I can focus on the point(s) he is making, putting all my mental energy into that, rather than having to put a good deal of energy into trying to figure out what is actually being said. (Thanks for your comment.)

By: Steve McIntyre

Steve McIntyre — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:54:43 +0000

Re: Steve McIntyre (#8), I hope that the download script here for the collation of 48 Santer tropo models together with matching KNMI surface models facilitates the handling of this material by others. I noticed that the provision of handy download data and info for Antarctica stimulated excellent work by others and hopefully the same thing happens here.

By: Steve McIntyre

Steve McIntyre — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:52:34 +0000

Re: Steve McIntyre (#8), that script makes it look pretty easy, but there's a lot of work in the collation. The run identifications are in the info.pcmdi table (which is in csv form online - see script above.) These identifications were scraped off the tropo data placed online by PCMDI following my FOI request (though they say that placing the data online had nothing whatever to do with my FOI request). The surface versions are KNMI tas versions where I located a corresponding run. There were collation problems with CCSM3.0, CNRM3.0 and also HadGEM2 where the "natural" order is not observed: run2 was used instead of run1.