Here is some interesting information from an Oman speleothem is a proxy for Indian Ocean monsoon levels. One of the most influential proxies in Moberg [2005] is Oman coldwater diatoms and there is a connection. It may also shed some light on Himalaya ice cores, which also measure dO18 in monsoone precitation. Continue reading →
A number of people are citing the von Storch and Zorita paper as somehow showing that the erroneous MBH98 method did not "matter". I stated previously that the VZ paper indicated that they had inaccurately replicated the hockey stick algorithm – which made their results irrelevant. I have since had some correspondence with von Storch, who I do not regard as being a member of the Hockey Team and who has always been very civil to us in both correspondence and public comments .
von Storch has clarified some points on the methodology in the VZ paper. However, the correspondence has merely confirmed my previous view that they incorrectly replicated the hockeystick methodology of MBH98. I have attached a short script in R here to illustrate the following discussion. Continue reading →
Roger Pielke notes that the hockey stick debate has been widely discussed and has issued a challenge to Mann and myself to summarize why the hockey stick debate should matter to anyone. A fair question. He characterizes the latest exchanges over realclimate posting policy in very unflattering terms to all parties involved (including myself). While I tend to think of my role in this little scuffle as being righteous, it’s hard to get involved without some diminution in dignity. Here’s Roger. (Archive)
Martin van Calmthout (who boo’ed the award to Marcel Crok) has published a long article in today’s Volkskrant in Holland. I have enclosed a somewhat tidied machine-translation from altavista.com; I don’t speak Dutch and don’t vouch for anything. (update: Hans Erren edited a prior version and his version follows). The Dutch version follows the English translation. Continue reading →
I attempted to post the enclosed post at realclimate yesterday, which was rejected. The post was to a topic, where McKitrick and I were directly criticized, and limited to scientific matters. Continue reading →
The first step in the J98 procedure is the standardization of all series based on 1901-1950 and then taking an average. I’m not a big fan of short-period standard deviations (not just me, but see also Trenberth [1984]). All of these series are at least 300 years long, so there’s no need for 50-year standard deviations. Nonetheless, for replication purposes, this was done. Visually, these seem to match pretty much exactly.
Figure 1. Left – Figure 2 from Jones et al [1998]; right – emulation using reconstructed data set.
Continue reading →
Jones et al [1998]] did not archive their proxy set as used. I requested this information from Jones this year and was refused, although he did send me two series (Lenca, Law Dome) not locatable anywhere in a public archive about a year ago. Here is some background on the proxies in Jones et al [1998] – 10 NH series and 7 SH series . I doubt that any of this information will be directly usable in my review of this study which is underway and so I’m posting it up. Continue reading →
It looks like there is a huge cock-up in the von Storch and Zorita Comment, which completely screws up their simulations. We alluded to a defect in their methodology in our Reply, but I didn’t realize just how big a defect it was. Continue reading →
I’m working away at Jones et al [1998]. Here’s an interesting diagram from Jones et al [Science, 2001] , which purports to provide confidence intervals for the J98 reconstruction (blue). There’s (at least) one really strange feature in this diagram. See if you can pick it out.
Original Caption: Fig. 2. (A) Northern Hemisphere surface temperature anomalies (deg C) relative to the 1961-1990 mean (dotted line). Annual mean land and marine temperature from instrumental observations (black, 1856-1999) (5) and estimated by Mann et al. (red, 1000 to 1980) (6, 10) and Crowley and Lowery (orange, 1000-1987) (7). April to September mean temperature from land north of 20N estimated by Briffa et al. (green, 1402-1960) (8) and estimated by re-calibrating (blue, 1000 to 1991) the Jones et al. Northern Hemisphere summer temperature estimate (9, 16). All series have been smoothed with a 30-year Gaussian-weighted filter. (B) Standard errors (SE, deg C) of the temperature reconstructions as in (A), calculated for 30-year smoothed data. The proxy average series (6-10) do not extend to the present because many of the constituent series were sampled as long ago as the early 1980s. Continue reading →
New comment by Antonio Regalado of WSJ – reporter not editorial writer – is here.
Some more on von Storch and Zorita
A number of people are citing the von Storch and Zorita paper as somehow showing that the erroneous MBH98 method did not "matter". I stated previously that the VZ paper indicated that they had inaccurately replicated the hockey stick algorithm – which made their results irrelevant. I have since had some correspondence with von Storch, who I do not regard as being a member of the Hockey Team and who has always been very civil to us in both correspondence and public comments .
von Storch has clarified some points on the methodology in the VZ paper. However, the correspondence has merely confirmed my previous view that they incorrectly replicated the hockeystick methodology of MBH98. I have attached a short script in R here to illustrate the following discussion. Continue reading →