Jeff Id has an excellent post on IPCC AR5 use of the highly flawed Steig et al 2009. Despite Steig’s efforts to block the publication of O’Donnell et al 2010, O2010 shows clearly that whatever is new in Steig et al 2009 is not only incorrect, but an artifact of flawed math and whatever is valid was already known.
As Jeff observes, Steig coauthor Josefino Comiso (who was very uncooperative, to say the least, in providing data underpinning Steig et al 2009) is Coordinating Lead Author of AR5 Chapter 4 on the cryosphere, where Steig et al 2009 is cited, but not O’Donnell et al.
AR5 chapter 10 cites Steig et al 2009 four times, without any citation of O’Donnell et al 2010. Jeff quotes the following from AR5:
It was concluded that the pattern of mean surface temperature trends in both West and East Antarctica are positive for 1957–2006, and this warming trend is difficult to explain without the radiative forcing associated with increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations (Steig et al., 2009).
As readers of CA and tAV are aware, Steig’s methodology smeared warming from the Antarctic Peninsula into other parts of Antarctica. Jeff observes of the IPCC draft (with considerable frustration):
That last sentence is too much for me. The positive trends are very easy to explain – bad math!!
In Chapter 5 (Paleoclimate), Steig et al cited as authority for polar amplification. In this case, they have a placeholder noting O’Donnell et al 2010 as follows:
[Reference needed: O’Donnell et al., ?]).
O’Donnell et al 2010 was the only reference among the 1000 or so citations for this chapter where the authors had not bothered locating volume citation information. It was the only reference returning the term “null” as follows:
O’Donnell, R., N. Lewis, S. McIntyre, and J. Condon: Improved methods for PCA-based reconstructions: case study using the Steig et al. 2009 Antarctic temperature reconstruction. Journal of Climate, 0, null.
One doesn’t get the impression that the IPCC authors had read, let alone assimilated, the findings.
Check out Jeff’s post.
Climate Audit 
15 Comments
Blatant, in your face, gaming of the system for all to see. This underscores how important their efforts to keep certain papers from being published were to the team.
Between Scylla and Charybdis we have a blind and heavy hand on the tiller.
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I just want Santa to put in my stocking whatever it is these guys have that they are never wrong. /sarc in case you can’t tell.
This is just disgraceful have these people no shame. The authors produce a ZOD not having read one of the key papers.
Conflict of interest anyone?
The same chapter (Ch10) loves Santer also! It has an “interesting” way of citing McKitrick et al (2010). From the first read, it appears that you fully support findings of Santer et al (2008) and if there are any small differences, these are resolved by Santer and coauthors (2011a) (in preparation) and Santer and coauthors (2011b) (in preparation)! 😉
McKitrick might be busy now reviewing the responses…
Although Comiso did not release the data that went into the AVHRR matrix, Steig to his credit did (after some prodding) release the AVHRR matrix itself, which was sufficient to show the defects of the paper.
The AVHRR matrix might have been sufficient to deconstruct S09, but a discussion of Comiso’s AVHRR cloud masking process and algorithm remains unarchived IIRC. I would argue that this process – which involves the foundation data for S09 – should have itself been submitted and peer reviewed prior to even considering the S09 submission. This is a significant issue which has received very little attention.
From: Comiso, J. C. Variability and trends in Antarctic surface temperatures from in situ and satellite infrared measurements. J. Clim. 13, 1674–1696 (2000).
What changed for Steig 2009?
From the Steig 2009 SI:
The “climatological mean” used for this purpose has not been released and it is unknown how it was calculated. Also unknown is the basis for assuming that certain values are “cloud contaminated.” Thus a slight cooling was turned into a slight warming. Personally, I doubt that any of this data supports a conclusion that there has been statistically significant warming or cooling in Antarctica (except perhaps for the peninsula.) There just does not appear to be enough hard data.
After Durban with its non-agreement and Canada’s formal announcement of Kyoto withdrawal, do you really think that the IPCC has any credibility left of more directly any ability to affect public policy?
Why would AR5 matter more than any other academic survey paper?
AR5 is just following the pattern laid down , poor science treated as its the ‘word of god ‘ becasue its supports ‘the cause ‘ and comes from the right type of scientists and very mind its actual contents .
and comes from the right type of scientists and never mind its actual contents .
The teenager goes juvenile. Infantile here we commme
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