Saturday, April 19, 2014

The Lies of Judith Curry

Update 4/19 9:55 pm - See "On Spoofing Judith Curry"


I have debated within myself whether to reveal and write about this, but after some reflection I feel I have to.

I think Judith Curry lied in a 2010 paper about the temperatures in the Southern Ocean.

I don''t say this lightly. I've looked at the data several times now. I don't know what else to conclude.

Curry published a paper with Liu in 2010:

“Accelerated warming of the Southern Ocean and its impacts on the hydrological cycle and sea ice,” Jiping Liu and Judith A. Curry, PNAS 2010

That paper claims:
"The observed sea surface temperature in the Southern Ocean shows a substantial warming trend for the second half of the 20th century."
Except, it's very easy to download the data and show for yourself that the Southern Ocean SSTs are actually cooling, as Bob Tisdale did here.

You can easily verify this for yourself. The SST data is here. Pick the region from 60 South to 90 South. I did this myself, with the time series starting in 1/3/1990 and ending in 1/29/14, the end date chosen because it was the time I was researching my article.

I found that, over this time period, the Southern Ocean SST changed by -0.082°C/decade, with a statistical uncertainty of only ± 0.001°C/decade (OLS only, no autocorrelation), for a total cooling of -0.19°C over this interval.

So how did Liu and Curry find warming? I really have no idea. It's certainly not a result I trust, and I have some serious concerns that their calculation is fraudulent and that their paper is incorrect, and purposely misleading.

Why? I don't know, at this point. I'm interested in hearing speculations in the comments.

11 comments:

TheTracker said...

Did you email Curry?

That's got to be your move here. Give an accessible public figure the opportunity to respond to the appearance of impropriety. Not that you need me to talk Journalism 101 at you.

Jon said...

I'm the opposite of a Curry fan but surely she relied on some source of data that extends earlier than 1990 to support a statement like that. She hasn't reached the just making things up stage yet from anything I've seen.

David Appell said...

Of course I emailed her. Her response about Tisdale was what I indicated.

TheTracker said...

What you indicated where? You mention Tisdale's name exactly once. Nowhere does it say that you contacted Curry, or what she said. I would suggest clarifying that in the post.

David Appell said...

Of course I emailed Judith Curry. She responded three times on 2/3/14. Her first reply aid, "Tisdale's data analysis is usually reliable."

steven said...

Moron.

"You can easily verify this for yourself. The SST data is here. Pick the region from 60 South to 90 South. I did this myself, with the time series starting in 1/3/1990 and ending in 1/29/14, the end date chosen because it was the time I was researching my article."

For a paper published in 2010, to verify the claims of the paper you need THE DATA AS USED.
not the file pointed to, which may have changed.
Not a file that has years more of data.
Not what you downloaded.
You need the data AS USED

now you know why I always ask for the data AS USED.
not a link
not a description.
the actual fricking data.

Go ask for the data AS USED.
my guess is the authors dont have that.

David Appell said...

Steven: Are you saying the authors destroyed their data?

That's even worse than fraudulent....

steven said...

No moron,

I'm suggesting that like most climate scientists they dont archive their data as used. They point to a url and forget that the underlying data may change.
For people destroying data or losing it, that would be Jones.

David Appell said...

Steven/moron: You have been spoofed:

http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2014/04/on-spoofing-judith-curry.html

Alex Harvey said...

David, you are silly, immature child, and just wasted an hour of my day. If you were engaged in some kind of "parody" you wouldn't have been responding to comments. Admit you stuffed up.

David Appell said...

Alex: You spent an hour reading my two little blog posts?

I doubt it.

But it seems I've made my point.