I did a quick calculation. If the current USA48 trend is SUSA48, and the Watts et al claim is true that it is really (2/3)SUSA48, then the change in the global trend will be (weighting by areas)
where "ROW" = rest of world. So
where f is the ratio of the area of USA48 to the area of the globe (=1.6%). So
NOAA's 30-yr trend ("old") for USA48 is +0.15 C/decade, so the change in global trend is in the fourth decimal place -- only -0.0008 C/decade -- and far below any error bars. Infinitesimal.
Thanks for your comments, David. Anthony Watts said, “We also see evidence of this same sort of siting problem around the world at many other official weather stations, suggesting that the same upward bias on trend also manifests itself in the global temperature record” However, without knowing what data this comment is based on, it's not possible to evaluate how much credibility it merits.
ReplyDeleteI think this study reinforces the uncertainty in the land-based temperature records. I expect that the US records are better than average. So, the true worldwide temperatures must be quite uncertain.
Yeah, David, like I'm going to trust Anthony Watts' opinion on the quality of siting stations around the world. Get real.
ReplyDeleteBEST look at all these sites and made judgements about them -- they found the same results as everyone else. Why should I begin to think Watts et al does it better?
In what way does this USA48 claim "reinforce" uncertainty in the land-based records? What extra uncertainty is there that scientists aren't capturing?
I think you only like this manuscript because it supports your biases. Have you even read the paper yet?
I thought the BEST adjustment was based on a mathematical formula, rather than a human inspection of each site's history. Maybe I was wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe many NOAA adjustments indicate that many of the recorded temperatures needed correcting. That means they were uncertain. While the NOAA adjustments may have made the temperatures more appropriate, their adjustment process added more uncertainty. The Watts study suggests that the NOAA adjustment process may not have been sufficient to get a true trend. This suggests even more uncertainty in what the true or appropriate values are.
I believe that many analyses start with the adjusted data points, as if they were actual data. Certainly some or all international data is treated this way, because in some cases the actual values weren't even retained by CRU. A better approach to modeling would be to always start with the reported data. Any adjustment would be part of the analysis. Uncertainty in the adjustment process would then be measured and be a part of the total uncertainty of the model.
I like this manuscript for several reasons:
1. I am flummoxed at NOAA's adjustment of decades-old temperatures. I've done a ton of data analysis. Occassionally I adjusted some data point that looked obviously wrong or unrepresentative. But, I've never seen that kind of wholesale adjustment of data.
2. I am dubious that data can be corrected just based on a mathematical formula without using specific information about which data points are unrepresentative, because of UHI effect or other problems.
3. According to the climate models, the troposphere is supposed to warm faster than that earth's surface, but the records show the reverse. I don't know how to reconcile this difference. One possibility is that the surface trends are over-stated.
4. The overwhelming preponderance of money and prestige goes to those showing more warming and more harm from climate change. Scientists literally risk their careers by being skeptics. Researchers are therefore motivated to find warming. (This is the opposite of the false claim that skeptical work is dubious, because skeptics supposedly have huge amounts of money from energy companies.)
Cheers
David, and you trust the "human inspectors" sent out by Watts to look at temperature stations to be objective?
ReplyDeleteHilarious.
"I am flummoxed at NOAA's adjustment of decades-old temperatures. I've done a ton of data analysis. Occassionally I adjusted some data point that looked obviously wrong or unrepresentative. But, I've never seen that kind of wholesale adjustment of data."
ReplyDeleteHave you done analysis of historical data that was obviously biased?
David: Can you point me to ANY raw data that isn't biased?
ReplyDeleteI bet you can't.
"According to the climate models, the troposphere is supposed to warm faster than that earth's surface, but the records show the reverse. I don't know how to reconcile this difference. One possibility is that the surface trends are over-stated."
ReplyDeleteAnother possibility is that the satellite trends are understands. It's telling that this possibility didn't occur to you.
Carl Mears, leader of the RSS satellite group, Sept 2014:
"Does this slow-down in the warming mean that the idea of anthropogenic global warming is no longer valid? The short answer is ‘no’. The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation. This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought.
"The truth is that there are lots of causes besides errors in the fundamental model physics that could lead to the model/observation discrepancy. I summarize a number of these possible causes below. Without convincing evidence of model physics flaws (and I haven’t seen any), I would say that the possible causes described below need to be investigated and ruled out before we can pin the blame on fundamental modelling errors."
http://www.remss.com/blog/recent-slowing-rise-global-temperatures
"The overwhelming preponderance of money and prestige goes to those showing more warming and more harm from climate change."
ReplyDeleteDavid, this is complete bullshit which you haven't prove in any way.
Scientists make their bones by finding results that others have not, or by finding previous findings wrong.
"I am dubious that data can be corrected just based on a mathematical formula without using specific information about which data points are unrepresentative, because of UHI effect or other problems."
ReplyDeleteMore bullshit.
If your backyard thermometer read 56 F, and your neighbor's to the right read 48 F, and your neighbor's to the left read 47 F, what would you conclude?
"The overwhelming preponderance of money and prestige goes to those showing more warming and more harm from climate change. Scientists literally risk their careers by being skeptics."
ReplyDeleteHow the hell would you know? You're not a scientist. You're not in the scientific community. You don't apply for science grants.
You don't know anything at all about science funding. All you think you know is what you're read on blogs that don't know anything either.
You have lots of opinions on things you don't know shit about. Because that's how deniers operate.
Judith Curry and a few other skeptic Professors have described the pressure to be on the alarmist side. They say it would be a huge risk for a non-tenured academic to be known as a skeptic. Are they right? I've not seen any rebuttal to their POV. Maybe you have. If you can point me to people who assert that there's no risk for an academic person to be a skeptic, I'd like to see it.
ReplyDeleteIndependent evidence of the pressure on skeptics was the resignation of Wolfgang Wagner as editor-in-chief of the journal "Remote Sensing". He allowed a paper to be published that cast some doubt on the alarmist theories. He didn't do anything wrong. He selected appropriately qualified reviewers. They approved the paper. Although when he resigned, he said the paper was flawed, I'm not sure how he would know this. AFAIK he wasn't a specialist in the subject. Had the paper been obviously wrong, there might have been a request to withdraw the paper, but there was no such request. It seems that the paper was controversial, rather than clearly wrong. Really, the only thing he did wrong was to allow a skeptic paper to be published. That cost him his position as editor in chief of that journal. His resignation showed the power of the alarmists.
BTW my wife published over 100 scientific papers, so I have some idea of the competition for funding and publication in academia. I also published some important actuarial papers, but that was different. My career didn't depend on number of publications or what I said. It's interesting that a person working in business was freer to state an opinion than some academic researchers are.
Cheers
"Judith Curry and a few other skeptic Professors have described the pressure to be on the alarmist side."
ReplyDeleteBoo hoo for her. Judith Curry likes to play the victim, and AGW gives her all the opportunity she's looking for.
The right idea wins in science. Always. Always.
Curry's ideas haven't won. Instead of remaining dignified about that, she quits the game and sulks off and crys about her victimhood and tries to advance crappy science from nincompoops like from Watts.
And people like you fall for it because Curry satisfies your blatant biases.
"Independent evidence of the pressure on skeptics was the resignation of Wolfgang Wagner as editor-in-chief of the journal "Remote Sensing". He allowed a paper to be published that cast some doubt on the alarmist theories. He didn't do anything wrong."
ReplyDeleteWrong. He allowed a crappy paper to be published that had no business in his journal. He was played by the authors.
Predictably, the Spencer & Brasewll paper went nowhere and has meant nothing to climate science.
Wagner did the decent thing and resigned. I asked him for an interview then, and again a year later. He declined both times, which I totally understand.
And I understand what his resignation meant. As I wrote, the Spencer & Braswell paper went nowhere at all.
"It's interesting that a person working in business was freer to state an opinion than some academic researchers are."
ReplyDeleteWhat's interesting is how you know who is free to say what and what limitations they all face.
Generalize much?
I published a couple of papers in graduate school, and one while at Bell Labs. The latter required much nore approval from higher ups than the former, while saying much less.
Judith Curry as a skeptic? Professor has argued in at least two Senate Subcommittee hearings that attribution of global warming to human causes is undermined by an unexplained small increasing trend in Antarctic sea ice extent. For some reason the forgot to mention that this is associated with increased sea temperatures in the area, and that scientific papers have provided an explanation. One rebuttal to her POV is shown in Liu and Curry (2010).
ReplyDeletedave -- a hypothesis is not a definite explanation. Nobody knows for sure why Antarctic ice extent has been growing, despite a warming planet. Nor do they know why the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet. Curry suspects that these two effects are related, although she hasn't claimed to have conclusive evidence
ReplyDeleteBTW Prof. Curry and I both believe that the planet has been warming and that man's CO2 emissions have contributed to the warming.
Cheers
David, so what if Spencer & Brasewll paper went nowhere and has meant nothing to climate science? The great majority of published papers go nowhere and mean nothing to science, but the editors don't all resign. In fact, there's a lot of evidence that many or most scientific papers are flat-out wrong. See "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
ReplyDeleteYou say Wagner was "played" by Spencer & Braswell. In what ways did the authors "play" Wagner? Did they lie to him or mislead him? Did they require that people friendly to their POV be the reviewers? Did they bring improper pressure on him to accept the paper?
Cheers
"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
ReplyDeleteSo the recent Watts et al manuscript is most likely false, right?
You are misapplying the results of this paper. It concerns papers that derive a p-value, which very few papers in climate science do. Because to get a p-value, you need to do the same experiment on many identical initial states -- that can rarely be done in climate science, because it isn't an experimental science, its an observational science.
That paper mostly applies to medical research, where sample size matters.
Using it to dismiss any result you don't like doesn't work.
"David, so what if Spencer & Brasewll paper went nowhere and has meant nothing to climate science? The great majority of published papers go nowhere and mean nothing to science, but the editors don't all resign."
ReplyDeleteDid you read the editor's resignation letter?
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/9/2002/pdf
This should have been a huge embarassment to Spencer. Except he has ostracized himself from the scientific community to such an extent that no one any longer takes him seriously or pays any attention to his claims.
"Nobody knows for sure why Antarctic ice extent has been growing, despite a warming planet. Nor do they know why the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet. Curry suspects that these two effects are related, although she hasn't claimed to have conclusive evidence."
ReplyDeleteThe experts sure know a hell of a lot more about it than Judith Curry does.
Just because she has a blog doesn't make her an expert. In anything.
"a hypothesis is not a definite explanation."
ReplyDeleteAll scientific ideas are hypothesis. They can be proven false, but never proven correct.
Still, Einstein's theory of general relativity has passed all experimental tests. It's the best explaination for gravity that is out there.
Wagner isn't specific. He says, ..."the paper by Spencer and Braswell "is most likely problematic in both aspects [fundamental methodological errors or false claims]". But doesn't say what the alleged problems are. Furthermore, the phrase "most likely" weakens his criticism. Wagner took no steps to withdraw of the paper or to have a correction published, nor did any other critic of the paper. Without specifics, one cannot evaluate the alleged problems. When my wife published a criticism of work by Dr. Zamboni, her letter was specific about what he did wrong and how she knew it.
ReplyDeleteEven if Wagner's accusation is true, that wouldn't mean that he did anything wrong. He's not an expert in every field. At worst, the reviewers made a bad decision.
I didn't quote the Ioannidis paper to prove that any particular paper is wrong. I quoted it to prove that journal editors don't resign just because their journal published a bad or weak paper. Wagner says his resignation is tied to the fact that the paper supported a skeptical position on climate change and received publicity as such.
Dr. Curry isn't an expert because she has a blog. Her wikipedia entry shows that she's an expert. She has just about every qualification imaginable: huge number of published climate change papers, invited participant in earlier IPCC panels, scientific awards, department chairmanship, book author and book editor, etc.
Yes, many widely agreed-upon theories are strictly speaking hypotheses. However, the point I intended to make is that dave's theory of why Antarctic ice is expanding is not widely agreed-upon. Sorry for the clumsy wording.
Cheers
"However, the point I intended to make is that dave's theory of why Antarctic ice is expanding is not widely agreed-upon."
ReplyDeleteI don't think you fully appreciate the irony contained in lower case dave's post (Seriously, one of you guys needs to change your name to Sam). This wasn't "dave's theory", but rather this was "Judith Curry's theory". Or at least, this was a model developed by Jiping Liu to which Judith Curry attached her name. From the paper,
"Author contributions: J.L. designed research, J.L. performed research, J.L. analyzed data, and J.L. and J.C. wrote the paper."
Back in one of the earlier posts David in Cal wrote:
"Mann was using a complex statistical method that required centering. He used a non-standard method to do this."
As I pointed out previously, Mann did a principal component analysis in which the centering he used yielded a warming component as the first eigenvalue. Guess what Liu and Curry did. They did a principal component analysis of the temperatures in the Southern Ocean. And the warming component was the largest eigenvalue as shown in Fig 2a of the paper.
And Judith Curry has no idea what caused increasing ice in the Antarctic? From the abstract:
"The observed sea surface temperature in the Southern Ocean shows a substantial warming trend for the second half of the 20th century. Associated with the warming, there has been an enhanced atmospheric hydrological cycle in the Southern Ocean that results in an increase of the Antarctic sea ice for the past three decades through the reduced upward ocean heat transport and increased snowfall."
So when David in Cal writes:
"Nobody knows for sure why Antarctic ice extent has been growing, despite a warming planet. Nor do they know why the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet. Curry suspects that these two effects are related, although she hasn't claimed to have conclusive evidence."
Actually the faster warming in the Arctic is well known to be due to polar amplification (positive feedback due to a decrease in albedo). It's what the famous climatologist Suki Manabe predicted back in 1980. There may be more of a dispute regarding the increase in Antarctic sea ice, whether it's decreased ocean heat transport and increased precipitation as Curry thinks or perhaps increased winds or increase in fresh water( with lower density) outflow from land glaciers. But you're right, the two effects are related: they are consequences of a warming world.
David: The problems with Spencer & Braswell were thoroughly revealed at the time.
ReplyDelete(No, I'm not interested in going over all that again. Happy reading.)
It's not often editors resign their position over publication of a single paper. That this editor did tells you how seriously he saw the review process as corrupted.
David in Cal wrote:
ReplyDelete"Judith Curry and a few other skeptic Professors have described the pressure to be on the alarmist side. They say it would be a huge risk for a non-tenured academic to be known as a skeptic. Are they right? I've not seen any rebuttal to their POV. Maybe you have. If you can point me to people who assert that there's no risk for an academic person to be a skeptic, I'd like to see it."
Which "few other skeptic professors?"
Why would you believe everything Judity Curry says? (Well, I know why YOU would -- it confirms your biases.)
Why would anyone rebut Curry? Fact is, few-to-no scientists care what she writes on her blog, Because scientists focus on doing science, not on what Judity Curry is whining about this week. None of them care, frankly. So why rebut and say, "Gee, I've had no problem getting grants."
David in Cal writes:
ReplyDelete"Nobody knows for sure why Antarctic ice extent has been growing, despite a warming planet."
Baloney.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/12/clarity-on-antarctic-sea-ice/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/11/so-what-is-really-happening-in-antarctica/
David in Cal wrote:
ReplyDelete"Wagner says his resignation is tied to the fact that the paper supported a skeptical position on climate change and received publicity as such."
What a fucking lie.
Here is in fact what the editor wrote:
"In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents."
This directly disproves your claim.
You are a liar, David in Cal.
David in Cal:
ReplyDeleteApologies for my harsh, impolite language. I went too far.
I think you clearly claimed the opposite of what the editor's statement said.
I don't know why you did that, but I shouldn't have been so rude. I'm sorry.
-- David
Thanks for your comment. Happy Holidays!
ReplyDeleteHappy Holidays to you, too, David.
ReplyDeleteBut I'd still like to know why you mischaracterized the Wagner's resignation letter.