This continues the previous post which is overweight in comments.
The NAS Panel used Esper et al 2002 as a comfort series in their spaghetti graph, but did not perform any due diligence on it. As some of you may recall, I’ve had prolonged correspondence with Science, after being stonewalled by Esper, and, as a result of that, have obtained versions of the chronologies used by Esper for all but one site (Mongolia). I’ve been unable to obtain any sort of coherent explanation of Esper’s methodology. However, any robust result should be valid under an average of the site chronologies. This is what I’ve done here, adding in the Mongolia version used in Osborn and Briffa 2006. A simple re-scaled average fits the Esper reconstruction well up until the late 20th century when they diverge.
I’va also showed the foxtail impact separately. Esper uses two foxtail sites despite them being extremely close to one another – this does not happen anywhere else. As noted elsewhere, foxtails interbreed with bristlecones; Graybill collected strip-bark foxtail sites. The Esper foxtail sites are from Graumlich rather than Graybill but no information is provided which permits one to conclude that strip-bark forms have been avoided. The two sites used here are reported in Bunn et al 2005 and are the two sites with the largest HS. The graph below shows my emulation of Esper’s results (red dashed) together with my estimate of results in which foxtails are excluded.
Figure 1. Esper et al 2002 reconstruction. Archived, emulation and without foxtails.
The Esper reconstruction is unusual in that it is the only one that uses a series from the Polar Urals area not calculated by Keith Briffa. Here Esper uses the Polar Urals Update rather than Briffa’s Yamal Substitution or the predecessor Briffa MXD series.
My emulation of Esper obviously has a substantial Divergence Problem – which becomes a twofold Divergence Problem: a divergence between ring widths and temperature and a divergence between results as archived by Esper and as emulated. Esper has been totally unresponsive to any attempts to examine his data and methodology beginning long before climateaudit existed. It is hard not to draw an unfavorable impression from this obstinacy, especially when there are major discrepancies between archived results and replicable results.
On Sep 11-12, 2006, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm, Sweden hosted an international seminar on climate variability (seminar website here). The seminar had 16 speakers from 14 countries and was attended by 120 people. It was organized by Peter Stilbs and Fred Goldberg, who extended great hospitality to the presenters. Anders FlodstràÆà, President of KTH, agreed to the seminar and was an impressive figure as convener of the closing panel. Continue reading →
On Aug 12, I wrote to Ralph Cicerone, President of NAS, asking him to request unarchived data from various authors relied upon by the NAS Panel as follows:
I enjoyed the opportunity to chat with you during the most recent hearings of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. As I have previously written to you, I view the contributions of the National Academy of Sciences panel to paleoclimate debate as being very helpful, although I obviously do not agree with all aspect of the report.
One of the ongoing problems in paleoclimate is the failure of authors to properly archive data and methods. While Mann has deservedly attracted much publicity in this respect, the problem is much more pervasive, as recognized by the NAS Panel on Surface Temperature Reconstructions and by the Wegman report. The NAS panel once again stated the necessity for a clear and public description and archiving of data and methods, but inconsistently cited and relied on many studies, which have either not archived data and methods or done so in such an inadequate way that replication is impossible.
In many cases, I have corresponded both with the authors and the journals in an effort to obtain such data without success. In some cases, the correspondence has gone on for nearly three years without resolution. In several cases, the NAS Panel relied on such studies, even hearing personal presentations, but did not take the opportunity to request the authors to archive their data.
However, now that the NAS has relied on these studies, it is of paramount importance that these studies are closely examined to determine if their conclusions are robust, or have limitations such as the NAS panel described for Mann’s work.
I believe that a letter to authors who have refused to archive data and methods in a complete manner, coming from you in your capacity as President of the National Academies, which has just published a study relying on their reports, might be effective in achieving the mutually desired goal of inspiring the authors to archive their data and methods. In Lonnie Thompson’s case, since some of the results have recently been published in the Proceedings of the NAS, the request could also be made via the journal.
In an Appendix to this letter, I have set out missing and pertinent data for six authors. Considering all of the above, I request that you promptly write to each of the authors asking that they promptly archive the data at the World Data Center for Paleoclimatology or other archive acceptable to the NAS. Thank you for your consideration.
Cicerone has just replied, declining to take any action on the grounds that he could not “command” the authors to do so, which I already had expressly acknowledged – I merely asked him to request that they do so,
I then wrote to Gerry North who, to his credit, agreed to write to the various authors. Update: No further response from North or any of the authors.
Is anyone interested in starting a separate thread on water vapor and cloud feedbacks? While it is of some relevance to the hurricane/global warming topic, the relevance is indirect and this topic certainly has enough scientific meat for its own thread (provided people are sufficiently interested.
Comment by Judith Curry “¢’¬? 17 September 2006 @ 9:39 am | Edit This
Your wish is my command.
There are a number of topics in this area that intrigue me. In the mid-1990s, Ramanathan and others wrote about “anomalous atmospheric absorption” in which they argued that atmospheric absorption of near infrared solar radiation was up to 25 wm-2 greater than modeled (or in Trenberth’s standard figures). IPCC TAR used TRenberth, mentioning Ramanathan’s concerns only in passing without analyzing or explaining them. IPCC 4AR makes no reference to the issue at all as far as I could tell (I requested an explanation but probably won’t get one.)
A number of recent articles by specialists in water vapor have proposed significantly higher NIR absorption by water vapor than in climate models. Belmiloud and Tennison have written scathingly about this. There was an interesting clerical error in NIR absorption levels in HITRAN-96 used in all IPCC TAR models – the error in wm-2 was greater than 2x CO2. I’ve seen some discussion that observed NIR absorption can be (sort of) explained if cloud droplet sizes are assumed to be three times larger than generally believed. (I’ll check this reference).
I get the impression that recent work mostly attributes “anomalous” absorption to aerosols and, to some extent, I get the feeling that aerosols and higher parameterizations for NIR absorption by water vapor/liquid/clouds are competing mechanisms. Intuitively it seems to me that this would result in quite different feedback consequences – higher NIR absorption from water cycle would be a negative feedback whereas aerosols are not.
The recent discussion at realclimate [link] was also interesting – I was very struck by Held’s surprise that cloud feedbacks were all uniformly strongly positive – Held said that he expected the feedbacks to be evenly distributed between positive and negative. It’s a bit disquieting that such a leading expert should be surprised by this.
I’ve transferred a discussion from Road Map to a separate thread here. Here’s a plot of monthly CET temperatures and a simple R script to download the data and make the plot. 
The warmest months are as follows: <><><><><
| JAN |
1916 |
| FEB |
1779 |
| MAR |
1957 |
| APR |
1865 |
| MAY |
1833 |
| JUN |
1846 |
| JUL |
2006 |
| AUG |
1995 |
| SEP |
1729 |
| OCT |
2001 |
| NOV |
1994 |
| DEC |
1934, 1974 |
I thought that AGW attribution and detection studes argued that winter months were supposed to be warming the most, but CET winter months are certainly not showing anything anomalous.
I have just returned from Sweden and Holland and had an extremely enjoyable trip. I will post on scientific aspects of both visits in subsequent posts, but for now wish first to record my appreciation for the personal hospitality shown to me in Sweden by Fred Goldberg and in Holland by Marcel Crok of NWT.
In addition to the KTH conference on Sept 10-11, Fred Goldberg took me and a couple of other early arrivers on a boat cruise through a lake district in the middle of Stockholm. The boat cruise was on his own medium-sized power boat and took about 5 hours; crayfish were in season and are a local delicacy. The terrain is granite with pine trees like the Muskoka/Georgian Bay terrain in Canada -w hich most Canadians regard as particularly beautiful. The water vista of Stockholm is quite remarkable and one that I recommend to any other visitors. Each night had an excellent dinner in a different venue.
In Holland, I made two presentations – at the meteorological institute (KNMI) in the morning of Sept 14 and at the Free University in the evening. Both sessions were well attended – probably about 50 at KNMI and 120-150 at the Free University (I don’t have experience in estimating crowds and was too busy to make an informed estimate). After the KNMI session, I had lunch and talked for a couple of hours with the scientists interested in reconstructions – Nanne Wber, Rob van Dorland and Jos de Laat. I also had two long newspaper interviews and a meeting with an interested mathematician. Plus again excellent dinners with Marcel Crok and his charming wife. I’ll need to go on a diet. I talked more in 36 hours than I’d talked in the previous month, probably 2 months.
It is impossible to comprehend the number of bicycles in Amsterdam. There are tens of thousands of bicyles parked everywhere in Amsterdam and especially at the rail stations. Most streets have reserved lanes for both bicycles and street cars with cars having third priority in the city center. In Toronto, we’re having disputes over reserving street car lanes and have some limited bicycle lanes but this decision had been affirmed long ago in Amsterdam.
At the Free University, I was amazed to see a sign saying “Lezing McIntyre”, something that I’d never seen before in any language. A photographer from the university newspaper wanted to take my picture so I made sure that one was taken to include the sign. After the presentation, a couple of groups of students came up and wanted to have their picture taken with me. My daughter who’s the same age would have rolled her eyes in disbelief.
Both Stockholm and Amsterdam are extremely pleasant cities to visit and, in different ways, offer excellent models for what modern cities can aspire to. Combined with the personal hospitality shown to me, it made for a great week. Later I’ll chat about scientific issues in Stockholm and Holland.
I’m leaving for a week in a few hours and will only be in intermittent contact. No fighting please. Anybody that feels like fighting – take a deep breath and don’t. Save it till I come back. If you’re suspended by John A while I’m away, too bad. TCO, this includes you. Maybe bender or James Lane or someone will intervene with John A but I’m not going to deal with it until I return. If someone feels like writing something as a head post, send it to John A. Cheers, Steve
Judith Curry mentioned an AGU session on integrity in science. I’m thinking about sending in the following abstract. I’d need to do so by the end of the day. Any thoughts?
If science articles and findings are communicated to the public with the possibility that they may influence policy, then scientists must be prepared for more rigorous attitudes towards disclosure and due diligence than currently practiced in connection with journal peer review. Limited or negligible disclosure of data, methodology and adverse results may have been tolerated in the past, but will increasingly not suffice if results affect policy. Some practices already adopted in econometrics journals will be recommended for science journals.
Standards for communication with the public have already been developed in connection with the offering of securities. We will discuss these standards and consider how they might apply to scientific communication with the public so that such communications have both integrity and the appearance of integrity, illustrating these issues with some first-hand observations on the recent House Energy and Commerce Committee hearings.
This could also be a thread for discussion of this sort of issue for anyone that wants to keep the hurricane thread on hurricanes.
BTW, I thought that the Chronicle colloquy was pretty interesting. I don’t usually get to ask people questions directly, so I appreciated that the Chronicle allowed questions through without Gavin Schmidt/realclimate censoring.
Now that I think of it, the only other question that I’ve been able to ask a climate scientist directly was to Caspar Ammann at AGU last year – what was the verification r2 of Mann’s reconstruction? Ammann filibustered about why that was an irrelevant question, but didn’t answer it.
I asked North about bristlecones (and also about error bars), but here I’ll just talk about his answer to bristlecones. Continue reading →
Climate Audit 