Specialist literature on varves e.g. Besonen et al 2008 – coauthor Raymond Bradley -(which is cited by Tingley and Huybers) make the obvious observation that varves are compacted within a core. Besonen et al 2008 allow for compaction by estimating annual mass accumulation as a more appropriate measurement of varve “thickness”, rather than uncompacted varve […]
In 1997, the 121 m Lomonosovfonna ice core was drilled in Svalbard. As of mid-2009, when Hu McCulloch and I wrote CA posts on this core, nothing had been published on O18 values prior to AD1400 nor had any Lomonosovfonna data been archived, even for the post-1400 period. Both Hu McCulloch and I, in separate […]
A new paper in Nature by Tingley and Huybers h/t WUWT. In keeping with the total and complete stubbornness of the paleoclimate community, they use the most famous series of Mann et al 2008: the contaminated Korttajarvi sediments, the problems with which are well known in skeptic blogs and which were reported in a comment […]
TN05-17 is by far the most influential Southern Hemisphere core in Marcott et al 2013- it’s Marcott’s YAD061, so to speak. Its influence is much enhanced by the interaction of short-segment centering in the mid-Holocene and non-robustness in the modern period. Marcott’s SHX reconstruction becomes worthless well before the 20th century, a point that they […]
The longest very high-resolution alkenone core that I’m aware of is Sicre et al’s MD99-2275 (plus splices) from offshore Iceland (67N 18W). It is 4550 years long, its most recent value is 2001AD and its resolution is 4 years. Marcott used nearby core JR51GC-35 (also at 67N 18W), also an alkenone record, which had a […]
Gutierrez et al (GRL 2011) pdf here; data here is another very high resolution alkenone series that is well-dated in the 20th century. It was taken in an upwelling zone offshore Peru at a similar latitude to Quelccaya. Like the high-resolution series offshore Morocco and Namibia, it shows a sharp decline in alkenone-estimated SST in […]
While there are disappointingly few high-resolution alkenone ocean cores with 20th century resolution, there are a few. Given the importance of this class of proxy in Marcott et al, one would have thought the performance of high-resolution alkenones in the 20th century would have been of interest to Marcott et al, but they were silent […]
[Update 04/08/13: Josh has once again a brilliant view what’s going on here and in some other cases. Enjoy! ] No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation […]
One of the longstanding CA criticisms of paleoclimate articles is that scientists with little-to-negligible statistical expertise too frequently use ad hoc and homemade methods in important applied articles, rather than proving their methodology in applied statistical literature using examples other than the one that they’re trying to prove. Marcott’s uncertainty calculation is merely the most […]
Lonnie Thompson has done a much better job of archiving data for his recent update Quelccaya – see NOAA here – both in terms of information and promptness. Quelccaya is familiar territory for Thompson as it was the location of his first tropical ice cores (1983) and his first publication of this type. Thompson published […]
Climate Audit 