Climate Audit

Juckes discusses the Divergence Problem as follows:

Particular concerns have been raised about … the high latitude Eurasian trees (which have and anomalously low growth anomaly in the late 20th century — Tornetraesk, Fennoscandia, Yamal, Northern Urals in Table 1)

No one has ever said that Yamal has an anomalously low growth anomaly in the late 20th century. Or the Northern Urals. Or for that matter, Tornaetrask or Fennoscandia – which are the same site, just different names.

What critics have observed and Juckes doesn’t discuss is that the average of 387 “temperature-sensitive” sites goes down in the last half of the 20th century (the Divergence Problem). But within the population of 387 sites, you can find some that go up. And surprise, surprise, the Team chooses them over and over. Tornetrask is used in every study. Juckes has taken cherry picking to a new height by even using it twice (Tornetrask and Fennoscandia, well disguised by the use of different lat/longs.)

Update: To illustrate the “anomalously low growth” in Briffa’s Yamal chronology, look at the Figure below from Briffa (2000) showing Briffa’s turbocharged Yamal chronology. I’ve posted lots on it.

Since Juckes has elected to use the “old” chronologies, it’s worth re-visiting an earlier post on how Briffa dealt with the divergence problem in the Tornetrask MXD chronology which is one of the two Tornetrask chronologies used by Juckes. It’s discussed here over a year ago. It contains an explanation of the following diagram: