Age Models at Quelccaya and Kilimanjaro

Oct 24, 2005 – 9:10 AM

The Quelccaya glacier is at a similar latitude to Kilimanjaro and is also receding. It’s a logical point of comparison. Core 1 is 163.6 m deep (Summit Core- 154.8 m) and is attributed a start date of 470 AD (Summit Core: 744 AD). Annual dust layers are a guide to dating in the upper portions. In Core 1, the layer dated to 1800 AD is at 106 m in depth, the layer dated to 1590 AD at 130 m in depth (Summit – 120 m). It is both much younger and much thicker than Kilimanjaro. If you calculate accumulation rates at both glaciers according to a thickening model, it turns out that the assumed accumulation at Kilimanjaro is about 100 times lower than at Quelccaya, which is a young glacier. Precipitation levels appear to be comparable. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Proxies, Thompson | Tagged , | Comments (15)

More on Urals and Tornetrask

Oct 23, 2005 – 11:02 AM

I’m finally trying to finalize my presentation on Jones et al [1998] for the US GCRP workshop in November, which is necessarily mostly about the Polar Urals and Tornetrask reconstructions. Bot MXD chronologies and RW chronologies are supposed to correlate to temperature. So an obvious quesiton is how do they correlate to eachother. I’ve plotted scatter plots up separately before. Here I present them together with some color coding to show key dates. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Briffa, Jones et al 1998, Multiproxy Studies, Yamal and Urals | Tagged , , , | Comments (7)

Mount Kenya

Oct 23, 2005 – 9:11 AM

Barker et al. [Science 2001] studied two glacier-fed tarns (micro-lakes) high on Mount Kenya -, Small Hall Tarn (SHT) at 4289 m and Simba Tarn (ST) at 4595 m. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Proxies, Thompson | Tagged , | Comments (23)

More on Kilimanjaro

Oct 22, 2005 – 8:31 PM

The last thing that I should be doing is working on new proxies without finishing off work in hand, but this new data is interesting and, with it in hand, Thompson et al [2002] is even more frustrating. There are some weird splices that you don’t notice at a first read, but start to stick out when you have some data to compare it to. Here’s some more curiosities. See also a previous post here. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Proxies, Thompson | Tagged | Comments (5)

New Kilimanjaro Data

Oct 22, 2005 – 9:38 AM

A climateaudit first:- here is the first sample-by-sample àŽⳏ18 for an entire Thompson drill core – in this case KNIF2 and KNIF3 from Kilimanjaro. I had hoped that the data would be properly archived, but it was sent to me by Science and is webbed up here pending a more official archive, which will presumably take place in the future. In the mining business, you need to see complete drill cores – why should ice cores be any different?

I have been attempting to get Thompson to create proper permanent archives of data a long time (with an initial data inquiry over 2 years ago). The two data files here are very inadequate, since they are only 2 of 6 cores at Kilimanjaro and include only àŽⳏ18, but not ion and chemical measurements, and do not deal with other important published tropical sites such as Dunde, Guliya, Dasuopu, Quelccaya, Sajama and Huascaran (not to speak of relatively work at Puruogangri and Quelccaya that is rapidly becoming stale for not being published). However, it’s a small first dividend. Lonnie Thompson is one of the “wise men”, who recently wrote the Barton Committee advising them to butt out.

Here is a quick plot of the data and a few thoughts. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Proxies, Science, Thompson | Tagged | Comments (25)

Another Bristlecone/Foxtail Site: Timber Gap CA

Oct 19, 2005 – 3:32 PM

After a couple of bitchy posts about Ritson and Huybers, I’d like to do something a little more cheerful. Here’s some information that I’ve collected about Timber Gap Upper (ca529) and Timber Gap Lower (ca532), two Graybill foxtail pine sites that were important components of the MBH98 PC1 and have been used elsewhere. I’ve identified what seems to be this very location on a 19th century map to a former mining town (now a tourist town), Mineral King, California. I’ve found some very pretty pictures of the area and some interesting history. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in bristlecones, Proxies | Comments (6)

Reply to Huybers #3: Principal Components

Oct 19, 2005 – 11:13 AM

I previously posted up two comments on our Reply to Huybers here and here, the first of which contained some new material. Here’s the third and final instalment, discussing Huybers’ comments on principal components. While principal components were really only one aspect of our critique, the reaction of the Hockey Team and the “community” to our studies has been almost entirely to the principal components issues. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in MBH98, News and Commentary | Tagged | Comments (5)

Reply to Ritson

Oct 18, 2005 – 10:39 PM

A few weeks ago, I mentioned here that the new editor-in-chief of GRL, Jay Famiglietti, had removed James Saiers as our editor, had made remarks about our papers to Environmental Science & Technology that can be construed as critical, had pulled two rejected Comments out of the garbage can (including one that had been press released by Ammann of UCAR) and had advised us that one of the Comments, by David Ritson of Stanford, had been sent out for refereeing without an accompanying Reply (in breach of AGU policies on reviewing Comments), had been accepted and gave us 3 weeks notice to submit a reply. Our 3 weeks was up today and we submitted a Reply to Ritson posted up here. The Reply was submitted today and is being reviewed – all rights are reserved to the American Geophysical Union – not to be reproduced.

You’ll have to try to figure out the Ritson Comment from our Reply, but you’ll see that we don’t think much of it. Our Reply is written fairly strongly. The unfortunate thing for Famiglietti is that all our comments are correct and there is no way to sugarcoat the Reply. I previously expressed my astonishment at Famiglietti pulling the Ritson Comment out of the garbage can and my equal astonishment at Famiglietti breaching AGU review policies for an already rejected Comment. One would almost think that there had been pressure from the "community", but I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny.

What Famiglietti is probably going to find out is that there’s usually a good reason for policies, that they protect editors as well as authors and, if you have a controversial file, it’s usually a good idea to do it by the numbers. I can’t imagine that this file is going to be any fun for him, but he made his own bed by circumventing AGU policies in the first place. None of the choices for him right now will seem very appetizing and it’s hard to figure out where it will all end. For us, it’s been a total waste of time having to deal with the Ritson Comment all over again and I wish Famiglietti had done things by the numbers.

He’s going to find that the Ammann and Wahl file will be even worse – it will be interesting to see how he deals with their bile and with their withholding adverse cross-validation statistics – just as their mentors did before them.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in MBH98, News and Commentary | Tagged , , | Comments (41)

We Have 25 Years Invested in This Work…

Oct 15, 2005 – 9:42 PM

Some of you may recall the memorable climate science phrase:

We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.

Here’s the story behind this and some updates on it. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Archiving, CRU, Disclosure and Diligence, FOIA | Tagged , , , | Comments (154)

UMass Magazine on Bradley

Oct 14, 2005 – 2:33 PM

There’s another puff piece on Raymond Bradley in the U Mass magazine entitled Never Mind The Weather. The article reports, among other things, that:

Bradley says he is sickened by the coordinated and well-financed campaign to discredit the data he and others like him are generating.

If Bradley were asked to name people who were involved in this "coordinated and well-financed campaign", I wonder who he’d name. Would I be on the list? If he thinks so, it’s despite explicit statements that I am not being financed by ExxonMobil or anyone else and I am not doing this to save the carbon economy. I’m doing this from my savings and I’m doing this because I find it interesting. I’m also doing this without any "coordination". Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in News and Commentary | Comments (38)