Comments on: Salzer et al 2009 – A First Look

By: EdeF at Schulman Grove

EdeF at Schulman Grove — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:05:27 +0000

Have been comparing various weather stations in a large area surrounding the BCPs on White Mtn, compared the short-spanned White Mtn
stations with Bishop Airport, Independence, Reno and Las Vegas, NV,
Victorvile, Ca and LAX and SEATAC airports. Believe it or not, all of the Eastern California and Western Nevada wx stations correlate very well with each other when altitude and latitude are accounted for. This should not be too much of a surprise since all of these stations are
inland, upper elevation stations that are very dry, cloud free for most of the year with super low humidity and little fog. I did see some uptick in the temperatures in the last 15-20 years in Vegas and Victorville relative to the more remote sites. Not sure if this is UHI, increased lawns or ? Temperatures at LAX, Seattle and Huntington
Lake on the west side of the Sierras are boringly flat and uninteresting and don’t correlate with the others. I think I can move the instrumented period back a little bit by using some of these stations that go back prior to WWII with appropriate latitude and
altitude corrections. Unfortunately, there was little civilization in
this part of the world before WWII. There is barely enough years for
the calibration period, not sure how they did the verification back into the 1800s?

By: EdeF at Schulman Grove

EdeF at Schulman Grove — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 05:42:16 +0000

Have just plotted some of the higher altitude trees at Sheep Mtn just during the modern era (last century) and some surprises there. In one
tree the ring widths max out in about 1970 and then downhill from there,
in the other one it peaks about mid 1930s then steep downhill. If I plot
these data vs temperature its a scatter plot……looks like someone was
testing a new bird gun. Nothing like a linear trend. Same for the lower
elevations, its pheasant hunting time. Reminds me of when JeffID went
hunting last Nov. when Climategate broke. Have not found a lot of data
that goes all the way to the 2000s. Now, the report says that the last
50 yrs was the highest, but they seem to leave out that it looks like
there is a loss of response in the latest decades. It very well could be
that high temps are causing the trees to operate out of the optimum zone.
Let’s check that out, but don’t do any slight of hand that does away with
this. Remember, if we lose sensitivity in the 90s and 00s, the same could
be said for some times in the past. Goose and gander. By the way, what
is the lowest elevation that BCPs have existed in the White Mtns since the last ice age? If we find historic remnants of BCPs at say 8,000 ft
elevation, should indicate a much colder environment.

By: EdeF

EdeF — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 19:06:12 +0000

Have started to look at the individual tree ring data for the lower elevations at Methusulah Walk at Schulman Grove. Tree 93012A data starts at 1400 and
goes to mid 1990s. I don’t know how old this tree is in 1400, have no location
nor a picture of the tree. Don’t know if it is strip bark or not. For most of
the 600 period the ring data is fairly flat like that shown in the report for
the lower altitude trees. Data oscillates about the average data. But in the
late 1700s the tree rings increase dramatically about the time of the LIA. I
don’t know if this is because colder temps in the region have caused more ice
and snow leading to tree damage, then strip barking, or if as the temperature
cools, these trees once heat stressed are now operating in their optimal growth
region? The plot of this tree looks almost upside down from typical reconstruction plots. It also looks like their are (to the naked eye) 30 and
70-yr oscillations from the average. After the LIA highs the plot decays down to the long-term average ring sizes.

I am not sure why they don’t plot the actual weather station average temperature data but have used as reference late season density data? What don[‘t they want to show about the station data? I have been getting local wx station data from Bishop airport and other locations, transforming them to MWK
altitudes (latitude is the same so no translation there) and those plots look
fairly flat for the 20th century.

By: EdeF

EdeF — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 06:19:23 +0000

I finally had a chance to read the full report at leisure, look into some of
their assumptions and have found several things to take issue with. If ClimateGate hadn’t broke right at the time of this report we may have delved into it much more. The first thing that I noticed was that there is no attempt to standardize the tree ring data. This is raw tree data. But the report does not say what age the various trees are that make up this study. (Have found that they have, surprise, archived some of the data). Are they comparing trees of a similar age? Do the high altitude trees include ones that are younger, and
therefore have wider ring growth in youth? I am very perplexed by this, and by the fact that the higher altitude trees have much larger growth than the trees
at Methusulah Walk, which should be in the sweet spot of optimal conditions
for growth, unless the trees sampled there are ancient. Don’t know how this
got past the peer reviewers, the fact that there is no standardization. The other thing is that they say there is no divergence between the temperature
reference and the ring widths until 1950 is a laugh. Looks like things are
starting to diverge much earlier than that. I see no place where it is spelled out what stations are used for the temperature references. All of the stations
surrounding the White Mountains show the typical, mundane NH temperature trends
in the 20th century. There seems to be a divergence between the local temperatures and the ring growth at very high altitudes. On top of this, I have read Steve’s comments above and those are of primary concern.

By: Level_Head

Level_Head — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:29:06 +0000

From the FOIA2009 emails, on Briffa’s “serious issues” with the bristlecones. November 2006:
http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=756&filename=1163715685.txt

Another serious issue to be considered relates to the fact that the PC1 time series in the Mann et al. analysis was adjusted to reduce the positive slope in the last 150 years (on the assumption – following an earlier paper by Lamarche et al. – that this incressing growth was evidence of carbon dioxide fertilization) , by differencing the data from another record produced by other workers in northern Alaska and Canada (which incidentally was standardised in a totally different way). This last adjustment obviously will have a large influence on the quantification of the link between these Western US trees and N.Hemisphere temperatures. At this point , it is fair to say that this adjustment was arbitrary and the link between Bristlecone pine growth and CO2 is , at the very least, arguable. Note that at least one author (Lisa Gaumlich) has stated that the recent growth of these trees could be temperature driven and not evidence of CO2 fertilisation

It is interesting to me that some of these folks don’t believe that CO2 has any growth effect. Others have decided that it’s only short term, in defiance of the FACE and other experiments. But in any event, Keith Briffa’s complaints seem to provide support for Mr. McIntyre’s observations.

===|==============/ Level Head

By: terrence

terrence — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:42:26 +0000

Re: "I am familiar with the work of Mark Abrams (2nd author) and he is very good.", Dear Dr. Loehle, you are often portrayed as the reasoned and logical scientist here. however, if you think Marc Abrams is "very good", it indicates that perhaps 1) you do not know what good science is or, more importantly, 2) understand dendrochronology. You need to increase your familiarity with the subject.

By: Wolfgang Flamme

Wolfgang Flamme — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:23:56 +0000

Replicated Fig. S3 from SI here:

By: Josh Doe

Josh Doe — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:23:04 +0000

I think I should submit this to Nature:

Based on the results of Salzer et. al, I hypothesize that the increased rate of growth is strongly correlated to profound global warming. These bristlecone pine trees are growing at an increased rate in an attempt to filter more carbon from the air in order to reverse the effects of global warming. Only the trees near the top of the tree line are so environmentally conscious, because they have the most to lose should global warming continue. If the planet does warm, then the tree line will climb, and new trees growing higher than themselves will block the sun. The increased rate of tree growth is merely an attempt to prevent new high elevation trees from destroying their monopoly on sunlight.

Seems to be as scientifically and causally based as most of the AGW research. Someone want to peer-review this for me?

By: Don Keiller

Don Keiller — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:18:32 +0000

Looking at the data that Steve has posted up on “pdfs plotting ring width series by tree” I’m gobsmacked by the sheer amount of both between tree and within tree variation. If I, like jan Esper, had the ability to pick and chose my data, I could well make more or less any pattern it wanted.

By: Jim Steele

Jim Steele — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:16:16 +0000

I find it interesting that a 1972 paper by LaMarch and Mooney 1972 (Mooney is kind of the dean of plant ecology and edited the Salzer paper) determined that 2000 thousand years ago the Bristlecone tree line was at least a 100 meters higher. That suggests that current temperatures must be substantially cooler now