The below are part of a series of alleged emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, released on 20 November 2009.
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From: Rashit Hantemirov <rashit@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: INTAS
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 17:03:28 +0500
Reply-to: Rashit Hantemirov <rashit@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Dear Keith,
below is the list of the Ekaterinburg team members with brief
description.
=========
Stepan G. Shiyatov, Prof., Dr., head of the Laboratory of
Dendrochronology, leader of Ekaterinburg team, took part in
collecting subfossil wood in the Yamal Peninsula, cross-dating
ring-width series, developing and analysing the multimillennial
ring-width chronology. He has also carried out the work on
evaluation of changes in composition and structure of
forest-tundra ecosystems in Polar Urals.
Rashit M. Hantemirov, Dr., took part in collecting subfossil wood
in the Yamal Peninsula, cross-dating ring-width series,
developing and analysing the multimillennial ring-width
chronology. He has also developed and analysed juniper chronology
in Polar Urals.
Valery S. Mazepa, Dr., took part in treatment of individual
ring-width series and analysing of the Yamal long chronology. He
has also carried out the work on estimating of changes in woody
biomass in Polar Urals.
Alexander Yu. Surkov, technician, took part in collecting,
preparing and measuring the subfossil wood from Yamal Peninsula
=========
Finances(Eu):
Labour Overhead travel/sub equipment consum other total
12xxx xxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxxx xxx xxxx xxxx
For any case - how many got each team member (Eu):
Shiyatov S.G. 4000
Mazepa V.S. 3800
Hantemirov R.M. 3700
Surkov A.Y. 1000
Best regards,
Stepan G. Shiyatov
Rashit M. Hantemirov
Lab. of Dendrochronology
Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology
8 Marta St., 202
Ekaterinburg, 620144, Russia
e-mail: rashit@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Fax: +7 (34xxx xxxx xxxx; phone: +7 (34xxx xxxx xxxx
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From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: [Fwd: Rapid Climate Change]
Date: Fri Sep 28 12:51:xxx xxxx xxxx
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 11:32:30 +0100
From: Simon Tett <simon.tett@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: [Fwd: Rapid Climate Change]
Sender: simon.tett@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
To: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, sandy.tudhope@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; HP-UX B.11.xxx xxxx xxxx/782)
X-Accept-Language: en
Dear Keith/Sandy,
please don't pass on or discuss further -- this is the email I got from
Phil Newton. So with some reluncance I get to put up a strawman. I will
go with what we discussed in London but some nice graphics (or any
thoughts) would be helpful -- do you have any you can send me.
Simon
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 16:02:14 +0100
From: Philip Newton <ppn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Rapid Climate Change
To: sfbtett@email, a.j.watson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Cc: Meric Srokosz <MAS@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,
Catrin Yeomans <CVY.DST.Swindon@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,
Judy Parker <JMP.DST.Swindon@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,
Nigel Collins <NRC.DST.Swindon@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,
Neville Hollingworth <NTH.DST.Swindon@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Message-id: <md5:867B0102E7BAE34BCAE86F2E32B8167E>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="Boundary_(ID_5Sy4P7Icy2zVEqcBr4S8jA)"
Dear Simon, Andy,
Many thanks for agreeing to each give an informal presentation to the Steering Committee
on the first afternoon of the meeting.
As I mentioned on the phone, what I'm after is for each of you to look at the Abrupt
proposal and Prescient proposal/draft-science plan (attached as WORD documents), stand
well back, and put forward some ideas for how one might combine them into a single
coherent programme. The intention is to lay the foundation for some discussion, both
Monday afternoon and evening, in advance of the formal Steering Committee meeting item
that will deal with developing a single science plan. All SC members will have the
attached documents in their papers.
I'll summarise the few constraints we have at the start of the Monday session, so you
won't have to revisit the history; by the time we get to you, all will know that we have
the task of coming up with a single plan, and the events leading up to that
circumstance.
The constraints as I see them are:
The Rapid Climate Change programme has a budget of
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From: "R K Pachauri" <pachauri@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: TERI launches TerraGreen, an e-magazine on the environment
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 16:40:00 +0530
TERI is proud to announce the launch of TerraGreen (http://www.teriin.org/terragreen/), an e-magazine that will bring you news about energy, environment and sustainable development from India, once every two weeks.
TerraGreen was formally launched on Wednesday, November 28, 2001 by Mr. C. M. Vasudev, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Government of India in New Delhi.
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TERRAGREEN
News to Save the Earth
Issue 1, xxx xxxx xxxxNovember, 2001
Letter from the editor
Here is the first issue of TerraGreen, an e-magazine that will bring to you the most significant shakeouts in India's energy, environment and sustainable development scenarios. For concerned individuals across the world looking for reliable news and information in these fields from India has often been an uphill task. TERI has worked for over quarter of a century to disseminate information from these very fields. Taking that mandate forward, TerraGreen will bring you analytical, unbiased and straightforward reportage. In the wilderness of the Internet you will soon learn to rely on TerraGreen for news, views and information. So, welcome to the wilderness. Enjoy.
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News of the fortnight
What's happening in our green horizons and elsewhere? TerraGreen's news updates bring you the latest in environment news.
This issue's headlines
Pepper and people power
Periyar Tiger Reserve, Kerala- The India Ecodevelopment Project brings a much-needed economic fillip to the lives of Mannan and Paliyan tribals through pepper cooperatives. Find out how it all happened at http://www.teriin.org/terragreen/issue1/news.htm#pepper
Sunny through the clouds
New Delhi- Anybody for the sun? Soft loans for setting up solar water heaters in group housing societies from IREDA. Visit http://www.teriin.org/terragreen/issue1/news.htm#sunny to also find out about sun-powered electricity in the high, cold reaches of the Himalayas, for villagers in Leh and Kargil.
Of Birds and War
Afghanistan- The terror of war and bombings in Afghanistan is spreading far. So hangs the fate of India's winged migratory friends -- the Siberian crane, shoveller ducks, the crested poacher and Arctic tern, to name a few. At http://www.teriin.org/terragreen/issue1/news.htm#birds read about these avian anxieties.
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The Long Story
Let the Gentle Giants Be
Veraval, Gujarat- Fahmeeda Hanfee's first-hand report on the huge but vulnerable whale shark, and on a milestone that is something of a first in the official protection for marine life in India. Hanfee analyses the pros and cons at http://www.teriin.org/terragreen/issue1/feature.htm#f1
The Water Harvest
Kalakhoont-Madhya Pradesh, Sangani-Gujarat- Arnab Ray Ghatak's inspiring report of villagers (http://www.teriin.org/terragreen/issue1/feature.htm#f2) who looked beyond governmental apathy to drill water from parched lands on their own and are now reaping a golden harvest.
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In Conversation
At a time when a lot of people across India are grappling with power shortages, Mr Suresh P. Prabhu, Union Minister for Power, talks to TerraGreen's executive editor in a one-on-one.
http://www.teriin.org/terragreen/issue1/interview.htm
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Centrepiece
No one Need Go Hungry
Dr. L. C. Jain, Chairman, Industrial Development Services, economist and Gandhian, Dr L C Jain, unfolds a simple blueprint to change the bizarre food security situation India faces today - of rotting foodgrains and starvation deaths. Read more about Jain's views at http://www.teriin.org/terragreen/issue1/essay.htm. He laments that if Gandhi were to be around today and learnt of this cruel irony, he would invite an assassin to end his life.
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Reviews
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From: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Myles Allen <m.allen1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: RE: RE: Tyndall proposal
Date: Wed Dec 12 09:29:xxx xxxx xxxx
At 00:03 12/12/01, you wrote:
Hi Tim and Phil,
I'm afraid I missed their deadline -- I'm presenting at the Royal Society
meeting on IPCC tomorrow, and that had to take priority. If Simon is
interested enough to bend some rules quietly, I could certainly get him an
outline proposal by Friday, but if not, it'll have to wait until their next
call. It's frustrating, but it can't be helped. NERC just have too many
calls. As Simon points out, the Tyndall Centre's style may be a more
top-down, regulatory approach anyway, and good luck to them. Politically
negotiated emission targets may work, but I have to confess to having
doubts. Perhaps I have spent too much time talking to Dick Lindzen to
believe in central planning any more.
Myles, by "Simon" do you mean Simon Shackley? I don't think he'd be able to bend the rules
since the proposals have to go direct to the Tyndall Centre's administrator. As you say,
they are being more directive (is that a word?) in what they want this time round, and
since your idea isn't central to what they think they want I doubt whether they'd be
prepared to bend the rules. Hope the Roy Soc goes well - I hear they're charging 100 quid
to listen to you - a bargain!
Tim
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From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Ed Cook <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Science paper
Date: Mon Dec 17 15:13:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Ed (and Jan)
Frankly I am a bit surprised at your and Jan's response to my letter.
I thought I had explained clearly what I was writing to Science and did only that. After
some not too little experience in reviewing for Science and Nature , I returned what I
considered to be a very positive response, one which I knew Science would interpret as a
call to publish important results. This is precisely what they have done and no more could
have been expected. As to the sentiments and opinions expressed , they are objective and ,
in my opinion still correct. They are to be interpreted as a request for re-thinking the
logic and rationale of the presentation. I do not see why they require more than some
re-phrasing. Though I will admit that they ask for some minor (entirely justifiable) work
to include the correlations with summer seasonal data. I simply would not like to see you
write a paper that puts out a confused message with regard to the global warming debate ,
leaving ambiguity as to your opinion on the validity of the Mann curve and implying that
your series is a annual record , when I do not believe that you think it is. To get Science
to consider a rewrite is surely what you would have hoped for , and satisfying my remarks ,
in small or large measure , will not be the determinant in getting this published. Indeed ,
it may well be that the tone of my letter could have convinced them that this was important
work that should be published ( though with some provisos) despite what other reviewers may
have thought. What did the other reviewers say?
If you think I was too negative then I am sorry that we don't agree entirely - but that at
least is the normal !
I would not like this affair to ruin my Christmas , as it surely will if it is the cause of
our falling out . As for your message Jan , I prefer to think you were trying to calm
troubled waters , though you seem peculiarly adept at doing the opposite where I am
concerned, I prefer to ignore the remark about "not wanting to let this curve into Science"
( a response might only injure the prospects of any further collaboration) but I will say
that it goes without saying that Ed can have his opinion , just as even I can have. I would
never consider myself stupid enough to imagine I could ever influence your response to
Science by anything other than reasoned argument. If this is not accepted then ,at least Ed
I am sure knows that, I would not let this stand in the way of this paper.
Ed, I am sorry to hear about your condition and I do know how debilitating it is. Useless
as it is , you have all my sympathy and best wishes for a rapid recovery.
I am likely also guilty of short temper and extreme frustration at the moment because of
conflicts between family and work , both sides demanding more time and both being
increasingly ill served by me. Somewhere in the middle I feel increasingly suffocated of
late and in moments of sane reflection can see that much of the trouble could perhaps be
lessened if one had time to be more considered in ones actions - but the moments of quiet
reflection are invariably harder to find.
I am totally confident that after a day's rephrasing this paper can go back and be
publishable to my satisfaction by Science. I am equally confident that this interchange
was a waste of yours and my time . To the extent that I am culpable , I am truly sorry.
Keith
At 09:23 AM 12/17/xxx xxxx xxxx, you wrote:
Hi Keith,
First, I need to apologize a bit for what I wrote to you. It was a bit over
the top and came out during some serious physical discomfort that I am
experiencing now from a bout of shingles(? I'll find out from the doctor
today). It is all rather painful and depressing. So while I still think
that we have very real differences of opinion on the paper, I would hope
that we can accept at least some of these differences as part of the
scientific debate process and not let it affect us negatively or personally.
Paul Krusic came by yesterday and brought with him several parcels from the
lab, including the paper from Science. The editor will not accept the paper
as submitted, but will consider it after revision. Obviously, this is as
good as we should have expected. I will do whatever I can to satisfy the
reviewers comments, including yours, but probably can not rewrite it in a
way that will satisfy all of your concerns. At that point, it will be up to
Science to decide how to proceed.
Regards,
Ed
==================================
Dr. Edward R. Cook
Doherty Senior Scholar
Tree-Ring Laboratory
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, New York 10964 USA
Email: drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
==================================
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
[1]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[2]/
References
1. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
2. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
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From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Stepan Shiyatov <stepan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: INTAS final money
Date: Tue Jan 22 15:42:xxx xxxx xxxx
Stepan
I have the form , but it is not clear . Where I think I sign (page 1 bottom. under
co-ordinator) it says I have to prove my identity in Brussels?
I will phone them to ask before sending the form back. Will Eugene need a similar
signature?
Keith
At 12:15 PM 1/21/02 +0500, you wrote:
Dear Keith,
As I realized, our team must receive from INTAS the final sum of 737
EURO. I can get these money via Ekaterinburg Branch of VNESHTORGBANK,
as we did earlier. I am sending to you "Payment request" for
this sum, and you, as the coordinator, must sign it and send to
Brussels. In that case I can receive money in Ekaterinburg.
Last two months I was very bisy writing many reports for our activity
in 2001. From that days I will begin to work with material obtained
from the Polar Urals, mainly cartographic and photographic ones.
WE intent to take part at PAGES meeting which will be in May in
Moscow.
I wish you, your family and colleaques the best in New Year.
Best Regards,
Stepan stepan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
[1]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[2]/
References
1. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
2. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
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From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Fwd: Re: SCIENCE review
Date: Wed Feb 20 16:25:xxx xxxx xxxx
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 13:48:13 +0000
To: "Jesse Smith" <hjsmith@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: SCIENCE review
Dear Jesse
I am sorry for messing you about with this but I really am leading a complicated life at
the moment. I am attaching my comments on The Esper et al manuscript . You will see that
I think the work is genuinely interesting and potentially of wide significance. The
bottom line is that you should publish this but the way the authors have chosen to
present their results smacks of a lack of clarity of thought (and a lot of fudging!) . I
believe that they are more concerned with trying to temper their ideas so as not to
"offend" Mann et al. They choose to present their work as a generalised demonstration
of how to process a tree-ring data set merely to argue against an unjustified remark
made by Broecker about tree-ring reconstructions in general. This simply devalues the
significance of their work as this refutation is out their in the literature already if
only Broecker bothered to check. By trying to skate around the real questions that
Broecker was implying - i.e. is the methodology removing the true low-frequency
variance in the Mann et al curve and is the magnitude of the Medieval warmth understated
? - Esper et al are obscuring the real message of their results - namely that Mann et
al do most likely loose the low frequency variance in their reconstruction and they may
very well be underestimating the Medieval warmth . To get at this the authors need to be
honest about what their data represent (probably summer and certainly not hemispheric
wide coverage ) and is this really that different from what Mann et al actually
represent (even though they believe their's is a mean annual Hemispheric record).
I think the authors present a too-simplistic discussion of their curve and then gloss
over these difficult but important issues.
So I really think they should be published , but they should think again about the
interpretation and message .
At 09:25 AM 11/27/xxx xxxx xxxx, you wrote:
Dear Keith,
No, it is not too late, so please send your review. Thanks a million.
Sincerely,
Jesse
=======================
Dr. Jesse Smith
Associate Editor
----------------------------------------------
Science
1200 New York Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20005
USA
----------------------------------------------
(2xxx xxxx xxxx
(2xxx xxxx xxxx(FAX)
hjsmith@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
=======================
>>> Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> 11/27/01 09:17AM >>>
Is it too late for this or should I send a review by tomorrow?
Keith
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
[1]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
[2]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[3]/
References
1. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
2. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
3. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
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From: "Raymond S. Bradley" <rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: questions
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 23:26:xxx xxxx xxxx
<x-flowed>
I cut Hammer ref
I just thanked "ll those who provided data"
I was looking at Graybill & Shiyatov Fig 20.6, but you are right that the
warmest period was after 1160....though some argue the MWP extends into the
14th century....certainly it shows a cold 11th century. So I'lll cut that
reference, as requested...
I leave it to you to contact Dave Fisher as I don't know what he sent
you...so get back to me asap
Ray
>for the melt record (l) use .
>
>2. "Intercomparison of....techniques", Fisher and others.1996. Nato
>ASI Vol 141, "Climate variations and forcingmechanisms of the last
>2000 yrs", Springer Verlag etc. pp xxx xxxx xxxx.
>Can not track down yet where the low re one came from (can you ask Dave
>directly)
>Other points are ok
>Did you track down the Hammer ref (some European conference) ?
>Do you need list of acknowledgements yet? Should include
>Mike Salmon for drawing the figure
>and Fisher, Black, Luterbacher, presumably Johnsson ,Bianchi,Kegwin,
>van Engelen,Keith Barber and Darrel.Maddy, for the data I used.
>I am really pushed , sorry about brief reponse- honest.
>Keith
>
>
>At 10:46 PM 3/4/xxx xxxx xxxx, you wrote:
>>yes--they do show a MWp in shiyatov and graybill 1992--but i added briffa
>>2000, too.
>>i still need a response to my last email
>>ray
>>
>>
>>Raymond S. Bradley
>>Distinguished Professor and Head of Department
>>Department of Geosciences
>>University of Massachusetts
>>Amherst, MA 01xxx xxxx xxxx
>>
>>Tel: xxx xxxx xxxx
>>Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
>>Climate System Research Center: xxx xxxx xxxx
>>Climate System Research Center Web Page:
>><http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/climate.html>
>>Paleoclimatology Book Web Site (1999):
>>http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/paleo/html
>>
>
>--
>Professor Keith Briffa,
>Climatic Research Unit
>University of East Anglia
>Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
>
>Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
>Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
>
>http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
>
Raymond S. Bradley
Distinguished Professor and Head of Department
Department of Geosciences
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01xxx xxxx xxxx
Tel: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
Climate System Research Center: xxx xxxx xxxx
Climate System Research Center Web Page:
<http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/climate.html>
Paleoclimatology Book Web Site (1999):
http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/paleo/html
</x-flowed>
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From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Esper et al paper
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 16:39:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Tom Crowley <tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Dear Ed,
I'm really sorry I couldn't be more supportive of the final version of the manuscript. I
fully expected to be able to be more positive in my assessment. I was frankly very
disappointed when I saw the final version--it is overwhelmingly different from the version
you shared with us originally. Sadly, it seems to have suffered, and not benefited, from
the review process--a very odd scenario. I fault the reviewers as much (in fact more) that
I fault you for this. There are some really basic problems that they didn't seem to catch.
I hope neither you nor your co-authors take this personally.
I'm trying to be as diplomatic as I can be in my discussions w/ reporters, etc. but I
really wish you hadn't sprung this on us w/ no warning of the dramatic changes that were
made. I'm forced to be somewhat critical, because the flaws in some of your conclusions
need to be pointed out, or they will be exploited by those w/ alterior motives. You
certainly must have foreseen this, as must have the reviewers. I'm very disappointed, very
disappointed indeed.
I'm sharing my comments w/ Keith, Phil, Tim, Tom, Ray, and Malcolm. I am resisting the
temptation to write a letter of response to Science, although my better judgement dictates
that I should...
Mike
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.[2]shtml
Attachment Converted: "c:eudoraattachtreerings-comments.doc"
References
1. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
2. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1016818778.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rkerr@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, bhanson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Briffa & Osborn piece
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 12:39:xxx xxxx xxxx
Keith and Tim,
Sadly, your piece on the Esper et al paper is more flawed than even the paper itself.
Ed, the AP release that appeared in the papers was even worse. Apparently you allowed
yourself to be quoted saying things that are inconsistent with what you told me you had
said.
You three all should have known better. Keith and Tim: Arguing you can scale the
relationship between full Northern Hemisphere and extratropical Northern Hemisphere is
*much* more problematic than even any of the seasonal issues you discuss, and this isn't
even touched on in your piece. The evidence of course continues to mount (e.g., Hendy et
al, Science, a couple weeks ago) that the tropical SST in the past centuries varied far
more less in past centuries. Hendy et al specifically point out that there is little
evidence of an LIA in the tropics in the data. The internal inconsistency here is
remarkably ironic. The tropics play a very important part in our reconstruction, with half
of the surface temperature estimate coming from latitudes below 30N. You know this, and in
my opinion you have knowingly misrepresented our work in your piece.
This will be all be straightened out in due course. In the meantime, there is a lot of
damage control that needs to be done and, in my opinion, you've done a disservice to the
honest discussions we had all had in the past, because you've misrepresented the evidence.
Many of us are very concerned with how Science dropped the ball as far as the review
process on this paper was concerned. This never should have been published in Science, for
the reason's I outlined before (and have attached for those of you who haven't seen them).
I have to wonder why the functioning of the review process broke down so overtly here,
Mike
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.[2]shtml
Attachment Converted: "c:eudoraattachtreerings-comments1.doc"
References
1. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
2. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1016831188.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx" <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx" <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx" <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx" <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx" <tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx" <rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx" <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx" <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "rkerr@xxxxxxxxx.xxx" <rkerr@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "bhanson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx" <bhanson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: RE: Briffa & Osborn piece
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 16:06:xxx xxxx xxxx
Reply-to: drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Hi Mike and others,
I just read the AP release. As always, there is a bit of journalistic
license that was applied to interpreting what I said. The opening
statement in the release is utterly the words of the reporter. Some of
the quotes are probably accurate, but of course do not include
qualifiers, etc. I also talked with this journo before talking with you and
would phrase things a bit more carefully now after hearing your
concerns. So, I am not deceiving you in what I told you over the phone. I
would not express things the same way as you in any case, because I
do think that we have some legitimate differences of opinion on some
issues, although I think we agree much more than we disagree. Be
that as it may, talking over the phone to journalists in a rapid-fire
manner is not the best way to convey ideas and information and I
would have re-phrased or re-expressed some of what was written if I
had seen it before it was released. This was not an option provided to
me.
I think that it is a bit harse to say that the paper should not have been
published. While I might wish to change some wording in the paper
and express things a bit differently knowing what I know now, I don't
think that the paper is fatally flawed, like you do. I should also point out
that I have received a number of emails from respected scientists in
global change research who do not appear to share your opinion. On
the other hand, I have also received a couple of emails from certified
nuts, which is what you are obviously most concerned about. I am not
happy with such people, but I have also been savaged by similar nuts
like John Daly in the past. So, I guess I can't win.
Finally, this whole global change debate totally sucks because it is so
politicized. It reminds me too much of the ugly acid rain/forest decline
debate that I was caught in the middle of years ago. I am quite happy
to leave global change to others in the future.
Ed
Original Message:
-----------------
From: Michael E. Mann mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 12:39:xxx xxxx xxxx
To: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
rkerr@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, bhanson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Briffa & Osborn piece
Keith and Tim,
Sadly, your piece on the Esper et al paper is more flawed than even the
paper itself.
Ed, the AP release that appeared in the papers was even worse.
Apparently
you allowed yourself to be quoted saying things that are inconsistent
with
what you told me you had said.
You three all should have known better. Keith and Tim: Arguing you can
scale the relationship between full Northern Hemisphere and
extratropical
Northern Hemisphere is *much* more problematic than even any of the
seasonal issues you discuss, and this isn't even touched on in your
piece.
The evidence of course continues to mount (e.g., Hendy et al, Science,
a
couple weeks ago) that the tropical SST in the past centuries varied far
more less in past centuries. Hendy et al specifically point out that there
is little evidence of an LIA in the tropics in the data. The internal
inconsistency here is remarkably ironic. The tropics play a very
important
part in our reconstruction, with half of the surface temperature estimate
coming from latitudes below 30N. You know this, and in my opinion you
have
knowingly misrepresented our work in your piece.
This will be all be straightened out in due course. In the meantime,
there
is a lot of damage control that needs to be done and, in my opinion,
you've
done a disservice to the honest discussions we had all had in the past,
because you've misrepresented the evidence. Many of us are very
concerned
with how Science dropped the ball as far as the review process on this
paper was concerned. This never should have been published in
Science, for
the reason's I outlined before (and have attached for those of you who
haven't seen them). I have to wonder why the functioning of the review
process broke down so overtly here,
Mike
_______________________________________________________
________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________
________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (434)
xxx xxxx xxxx
http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .
Original Filename: 1016896740.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Raymond S. Bradley" <rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Op-Ed
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 10:19:xxx xxxx xxxx
<x-flowed>
Ed:
I just waded through all the correspondence with Mike re the Science paper
and Keef's commentary. I wish to disassociate myself with Mike's comments,
or at least the tone of them. I do not consider myself the final arbiter
of what Science should publish, nor do I consider what you did to signify
the end of civilization as we know it. Life goes on--now we have another
working hypothesis to examine. Great...one of these days we'll really know
what happened....until then, I find all these efforts to be really
interesting. That's not to say I agree with everything you said or did,
but then I don't suppose you are too enamoured of what I've done in the
past either. C'est la vie.
Ray
Raymond S. Bradley
Distinguished Professor and Head of Department
Department of Geosciences
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01xxx xxxx xxxx
Tel: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
Climate System Research Center: xxx xxxx xxxx
Climate System Research Center Web Page:
<http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/climate.html>
Paleoclimatology Book Web Site (1999):
http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/paleo/html
</x-flowed>
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From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rkerr@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, bhanson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: Briffa & Osborn piece
Date: Fri Apr 5 17:17:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Dear Mike, (and interested colleagues)
Given the list of people to whom you have chosen to circulate your message(s), we thought
we should make a short, somewhat formal, response here. I am happy to reserve my informal
response until we are face to face! We did not respond earlier because we had more pressing
tasks to deal with. This is not the place to go into a long or over-detailed response to
all of your comments but a few brief remarks might help to clear up a couple of
misconceptions.
You consider our commentary on Ed and Jan's paper
"more flawed than even the paper itself"
on the basis that scaling the relationship between full Northern Hemisphere and
extratropical Northern Hemisphere is *much* more problematic than even any of the seasonal
issues we discuss. In fact we did not do this. The curve labelled Mann99 in our figure
was, in fact, based on the average of only the land areas, north of 20 degrees N, extracted
from your spatially-resolved reconstructions. We then scaled it by calibration against the
instrumental annual temperatures from the same region. This is, just as you stress in your
comments on the Esper et al. paper, what should have been done. We think that this single
point addresses virtually of all your concerns. We can, of course, argue about what this
means for the pre-1400 part of your reconstruction, when only 1 EOF was reconstructed, but
the essential message is that we did our best to exclude the tropics (and the oceans too!)
from your series so that it could more readily be compared with the other records.
The fact that we have used only the extra-tropical land from your data is not clear from
the text, so we can see why you may not have appreciated this, but we think you will
concede that this fact negates much of what you say and that we acted "more correctly" than
you realised. Blame *Science* for being so mean with their space allocation if you want!
Remember that this was an unrefereed piece and we felt justified in concentrating on one
issue; that of the importance of the method of scaling and its effect on apparent
"absolute" reconstruction levels. In our draft, we went on to say that this was crucial
for issues of simple model sensitivity studies and climate detection, citing the work of
Tom Crowley and Myles Allen, but this fell foul of the editor's knife.
You also express concerns about the calibration of Esper et al. (e.g., you say "if the
authors had instead used the actual (unsmoothed) instrumental record for the extratropical
northern hemisphere to scale their record, their reconstruction would be much closer to
MBH99").
This point is wholly consistent with our discussion in the perspective piece, and indeed we
show that in absolute terms the records are closer when Esper et al. is calibrated using
unsmoothed data but since the variance is also reduced, the significance of the
differences may be just as high.
Finally, we have to say that we do not feel constrained in what we say to the media or
write in the scientific or popular press, by what the sceptics will say or do with our
results. We can only strive to do our best and address the issues honestly. Some
"sceptics" have their own dishonest agenda - we have no doubt of that. If you believe that
I, or Tim, have any other objective but to be open and honest about the uncertainties in
the climate change debate, then I am disappointed in you also.
Best regards
Keith (and Tim)
At 12:39 PM 3/22/xxx xxxx xxxx, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Keith and Tim,
Sadly, your piece on the Esper et al paper is more flawed than even the paper itself.
Ed, the AP release that appeared in the papers was even worse. Apparently you allowed
yourself to be quoted saying things that are inconsistent with what you told me you had
said.
You three all should have known better. Keith and Tim: Arguing you can scale the
relationship between full Northern Hemisphere and extratropical Northern Hemisphere is
*much* more problematic than even any of the seasonal issues you discuss, and this isn't
even touched on in your piece. The evidence of course continues to mount (e.g., Hendy et
al, Science, a couple weeks ago) that the tropical SST in the past centuries varied far
more less in past centuries. Hendy et al specifically point out that there is little
evidence of an LIA in the tropics in the data. The internal inconsistency here is
remarkably ironic. The tropics play a very important part in our reconstruction, with
half of the surface temperature estimate coming from latitudes below 30N. You know this,
and in my opinion you have knowingly misrepresented our work in your piece.
This will be all be straightened out in due course. In the meantime, there is a lot of
damage control that needs to be done and, in my opinion, you've done a disservice to the
honest discussions we had all had in the past, because you've misrepresented the
evidence. Many of us are very concerned with how Science dropped the ball as far as the
review process on this paper was concerned. This never should have been published in
Science, for the reason's I outlined before (and have attached for those of you who
haven't seen them). I have to wonder why the functioning of the review process broke
down so overtly here,
Mike
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
[2]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[3]/
References
1. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
2. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
3. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
Original Filename: 1018539404.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Edward Cook <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Your letter to Science
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 11:36:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Ed,
It will take some time to digest these comments, but my initial response is one of some
disappointment. I will resist the temptation to make the letter to Science available to the
others on this list, because of my fears of violating the embargo policy (I know examples
of where doing so has led to Science retracting a piece form publication). So thanks for
also resisting the temptation to do so...
But I must point out that the piece by Malcolm and me is very similar in its content to
the letter of clarification that you and I originally crafted to send to Science some weeks
ago, before your co-author objected to your involvement! If there is no objection on your
part, I'd be happy to send that to everyone, because it is not under consideration in
Science (a quite unfortunate development, as far as I'm concerned). The only real change
from that version is the discussion of the use of RCS. That is in large part Malcolm's
contribution, but I stand behind what Malcolm says. I think there are some real sins of
omission with regard to the use of RCS too, and it would be an oversight on our part now to
comment on these.
Finally, with regard to the scaling issues, let me simply attach a plot which speaks more
loudly than several pages possibly could The plot takes Epser et al (not smoothed, but the
annual values) and scales it against the full Northern Hemisphere instrumental record
1xxx xxxx xxxxannual mean record, and compares against the entire 20th century instrumental
record (1xxx xxxx xxxx), as well as with MBH99 and its uncertainties.
Suppose that Esper et al is indeed representative of the full Northern Hemisphere annual
mean, as MBH99 purports to be. To the extent that differences emerge between the two in
assuming such a scaling, I interpret them as differences which exist due to the fact that
the extratropical Northern Hemisphere series and full Northern Hemisphere series likely did
not co-vary in the past the same way they co-vary in the 20th century (when both are driven
predominantly, in a relative sense, by anthropogenic forcing, rather than natural forcing
and internal variability). What the plot shows is quite remarkable. Scaled in this way,
there is remarkably little difference between Esper et al and MBH99 in the first place (the
two reconstructions are largely within the error estimates of MBH99!)!, but moreover, where
they do differ, this could be explainable in terms of patterns of enhanced mid-latitude
continental response that were discussed, for example, in Shindell et al (2001) in Science
last December. So I think this plot says a lot. Its say that there are some statistically
significant differences, but certainly no grounds to use Esper et al to contradict MBH99 or
IPCC '2001 as, sadly, I believe at least one of the published pieces tacitly appears to
want to do.
It is shame that such a plot, which I think is a far more meaningful comparison of the two
records, was not shown in either Esper et al or the Briffa & Osborn commentary. I've always
given the group of you adequate opportunity for commentary on anything we're about to
publish in Nature or Science. I am saddened that many of my colleagues (and, I have always
liked to think friends) didn't affort me the same opportunity before this all erupted in
our face. It could have been easily avoided. But that's water under the bridge.
Finally, before any more back-and-forths on this, I want to make sure that everyone
involved understands that none of this was in any way ever meant to be personal, at least
not on my part (and if it ever has, at least on my part, seemed that way, than I offer my
apologies--it was never intended that way). This is completely about the "science". To the
extent that I (and/or others) feel that the science has been mis-represented in places,
however, I personally will work very hard to make sure that a more balanced view is
available to the community. Especially because the implications are so great in this case.
This is what I sought to do w/ the NYT piece and my NPR interview, and that is what I've
sought to do (and Malcolm to, as far as I'm concerned) with the letter to Science. Being a
bit sloppy w/ wording, and omission, etc. is something we're all guilty of at times. But I
do consider it somewhat unforgivable when it is obvious how that sloppiness can be
exploited. And you all know exactly what I'm talking about!
So, in short, I think are some fundamental issues over which we're in disagreement, and
where those exist, I will not shy away from pointing them out. But I hope that is not
mis-interpreted as in any way personal.
I hope that suffices,
Mike
p.s. It seemed like an omission to not cc in Peck and Scott Rutherford on this exchange, so
I've done that. I hope nobody minds this addition...
At 10:57 AM 4/11/xxx xxxx xxxx, Edward Cook wrote:
Hi Mike and Malcolm,
I have received the letter that you sent to Science and will respond to it here first in
some detail and later in edited and condensed form in Science. Since much of what you
comment and criticize on has been disseminated to a number of people in your (Mike's)
somewhat inflammatory earlier emails, I am also sending this lengthy reply out to
everyone on that same email list, save those at Science. I hadn't responded in detail
before, but do so now because your criticisms will soon be in the public domain.
However, I am not attaching your letter to Science to this email since that is not yet
in the public domain. It is up to you to send out your submitted letter to everyone if
you wish.
I must say at the beginning that some parts of your letter to Science are as "flawed" as
your claims about Esper et al. (hereafter ECS). The Briffa/Osborn perspectives piece
points out an important scaling issue that indeed needs further examination. However, to
claim as you do that they show that the ECS 40-year low-pass temperature reconstruction
is "flawed" begs the question: "flawed" by how much? It is not at all clear that
scaling the annually resolved RCS chronology to annually resolved instrumental
temperatures first before smoothing is the correct way to do it. The ECS series was
never created to examine annual, or even decadal, time-scale temperature variability.
Rather, as was clearly indicated in the paper, it was created to show how one can
preserve multi-centennial climate variability in certain long tree-ring records, as a
refutation of Broecker's truly "flawed" essay. As ECS showed in their paper (Table 1),
the high-frequency correlations with NH mean annual temperatures after 20-year high-pass
filtering is only 0.15. That result was expected and it makes no meaningful difference
if one uses only extra-tropical NH temperature data. So, while the amplitude of the
temperature-scaled 40-year low-pass ECS series might be on the high end (but still
plausible given the gridded borehole temperature record shown in Briffa/Osborn), scaling
on the annually resolved data first would probably have the opposite effect of
excessively reducing the amplitude. I am willing to accept an intermediate value, but
probably not low enough to satisfy you. Really, the more important result from ECS is
the enhanced pattern of multi-centennial variability in the NH extra-tropics over the
past 1100 years. We can argue about the amplitude later, but the enhanced
multi-centennial variability can not be easily dismissed. I should also point out,
again, that you saw Fig. 3 in ECS BEFORE it was even submitted to Science and never
pointed out the putative scaling "flaw" to me at that time.
With regards to the issue of the late 20th century warming, the fact that I did not
include some reference to or plot of the up-to-date instrumental temperature data (cf.
Briffa/Osborn) is what I regard as a "sin of omission". What I said was that the
estimated temperatures during the MWP in ECS "approached" those in the 20th century
portion of that record up to 1990. I don't consider the use of "approached" as an
egregious overstatement. But I do agree with you that I should have been a bit more
careful in my wording there. As you know, I have publicly stated that I never intended
to imply that the MWP was as warm as the late 20th century (e.g., my New York Times
interview). However, it is a bit of overkill to state twice in the closing sentences of
the first two paragraphs of your letter that the ECS results do not refute the
unprecedented late 20th century warming. I would suggest that once is enough.
ECS were also very clear about the extra-tropical nature of their data. So, what you
say in your letter about the reduced amplitude in your series coming from the tropics,
while perhaps worth pointing out again, is beating a dead horse. However, I must say
that the "sin of omission" in the Briffa/Osborn piece concerning the series shown in
their plot is a bit worrying. As they say in the data file of series used in their plot
(and in Keith's April 5 email response to you), Briffa/Osborn only used your land
temperature estimates north of 20 degrees and recalibrated the mean of those estimates
to the same domain of land-only instrumental temperatures using the same calibration
period for all of the other non-borehole series in the same way. I would have preferred
it if they had used your data north of 30N to make the comparisons a bit more
one-to-one. However, I still think that their results are interesting. In particular,
they reproduce much of the reduced multi-centennial temperature variability seen in your
complete NH reconstruction. So, if the amplitude of scaled ECS multi-centennial
variability is far too high (as you would apparently suggest), it appears that it is
also too low in your estimates for the NH extra-tropics north of 20N. I think that we
have to stop being so aggressive in defending our series and try to understand the
strengths and weaknesses of each in order to improve them. That is the way that science
is supposed to work.
I must admit to being really irritated over the criticism of the ECS tree-ring data
standardized using the RCS method. First of all, ECS acknowledged up front the
declining available data prior to 1200 and its possible effect on interpreting an MWP in
the mean record. ECS also showed bootstrap confidence intervals for the mean of the RCS
chronologies and showed where the chronologies drop out. Even allowing for the reduction
in the number of represented sites before 1400 (ECS Fig. 2d), and the reduction in
overall sample size (ECS Fig. 2b), there is still some evidence for significantly above
average growth during two intervals that can be plausibly assigned to the MWP. Of course
we would like to have had all 14 series cover the past 1xxx xxxx xxxxyears. This doesn't
mean that we can't usefully examine the data in the more weakly replicated intervals.
In any case, the replication in the MWP of the ECS chronology is at least as good as in
other published tree-ring estimates of large-scale temperatures (e.g., NH
extra-tropical) covering the past 1000+ years. It also includes more long tree-ring
records from the NH temperate latitudes than ever before. So to state that "this is a
perilous basis for an estimate of temperature on such a large geographic scale" is
disingenuous, especially when it is unclear how many millennia-long series are
contributing the majority of the temperature information in the Mann/Bradley/Hughes
(MBH) reconstruction prior to AD 1400. Let's be balanced here.
I basically agree with the closing paragraph of your letter. The ECS record was NEVER
intended to refute MBH. It was intended, first and foremost, to refute Broecker's essay
in Science that unfairly attacked tree rings. To this extent, ECS succeeded very well.
The comparison of ECS with MBH was a logical thing to do given that it has been accepted
by the IPCC as the benchmark reconstruction of NH annual temperature variability and
change over the past millennium. Several other papers have made similar comparisons
between MBH and other even more geographically restricted estimates of past
temperature. So, I don't apologize in the slightest for doing so in ECS. The
correlations in Table 2 between ECS and MBH were primarily intended to demonstrate the
probable large-scale, low-frequency temperature signal in ECS independent of explicitly
calibrating the individual RCS chronologies before aggregating them. The results should
actually have pleased you because, for the xxx xxxx xxxxyear band, ECS and MBH have
correlations of 0.60 to 0.68, depending on the period used. Given that ECS is based on
a great deal of new data not used in MBH, this result validates to a reasonable degree
the temperature signal in MBH in the xxx xxxx xxxxyear band over the past 1000 years.
Given the incendiary and sometimes quite rude emails that came out at the time when ECS
and Briffa/Osborn were published, I could also go into the whole complaint about how the
review process at Science was "flawed". I will only say that this is a very dangerous
game to get into and complaints of this kind can easily cut both ways. I will submit an
appropriately edited and condensed version of this reply to Science.
Regards,
Ed
--
=================================
Dr. Edward R. Cook
Doherty Senior Scholar
Tree-Ring Laboratory
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, New York 10964 USA
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
Email: drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
=================================
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.[2]shtml
Attachment Converted: "c:eudoraattachesper-scaledcompare1980.jpg"
References
1. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
2. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
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From: Tom Crowley <tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Ed Cook <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: peace
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 10:54:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
<x-flowed>
Dear friends,
I am concerned about the the stressed tone of some of the words being
circulated lately. Such difficulties not only hamper collegiality
(which I value greatly) but also the actual progress in our field.
I think you are all fine fellows and very good scientists and that it
is time to smoke the peace pipe on all this and put a temporary
moratorium on more email messages until tempers cool down a bit.
After this maybe we can discuss things somewhere where each party
comes to the meeting beforehand with a commitment to even-handed
discussion and give and take.
I hope I have not offended anyone in this message -- it is of course
a personal opinion. Maybe it is an illusion or prejudice on my part,
but somehow I am not convinced that the "truth" is always worth
reaching if it is at the cost of damaged personal relationships....
Best wishes, Tom
--
Thomas J. Crowley
Nicholas Professor of Earth Systems Science
Dept. of Earth and Ocean Sciences
Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
Box 90227
103 Old Chem Building
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708
tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
xxx xxxx xxxx
xxx xxxx xxxxfax
</x-flowed>
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From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Ed Cook <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Your letter to Science
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 12:32:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Whoaah...Please don't put words in my mouth Keith, especially such inflamatory word!
I was not attributing the entirety of "spin" here (which is of a pretty massive scale) to
you! And I said I think such "spin", where it has occurred, is EITHER sloppy OR
disingenuous. You chose to assume I was talking about you in specific, and that I was
attributing the latter rather than the former. My actual words don't bear this out. In the
case of the Briffa & Osborn piece, I actually tend to believe that sloppiness was the main
problem. In other cases of "spin" (e.g., the skeptics web pages of Daly and his ilk) it is
most clearly disingenousnous...I don't equate you with Daly and those folks by any stretch
of the imagination. Hopefully, you know that I respect you quite a bit as a scientist! But
in this case, I think you were sloppy. And the sloppiness had a real cost...
And as to whether or not your statements about IPCC are fair (I didn't use the word
"disservice"!), I'll leave that to each to decide. But personally, I think they were
unfair, because they opened up IPCC to criticism that is not merited by what is actually
said or shown in the iPCC report. Other IPCC authors who have contacted me feel the same
way, and perhaps there may be an official response on the part of IPCC authors. I don't
know.
But I agree that any further discussion ought to take place in the peer-reviewed
literature,
Mike
At 05:09 PM 4/12/02 +0100, Keith Briffa wrote:
I agree with the sentiments expressed by Tom . However, in his latest message Mike
clearly says that our perspectives piece did the IPCC a disservice. He then accuses us
of spinning the ECS paper to say that MBH is an underestimate of what it purports to be
and that we have been sloppy and disingenuous. Frankly this is too much to take . I am
not going to let this ruin my weekend so I wait until I have calmed down and find time
next week to write a response. In the meantime I just wanted to note that I disagree
with these comments. Perhaps the best place to continue this discussion is in the peer
review literature.
Keith
At 11:11 AM 4/12/xxx xxxx xxxx, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Ed and others,
I thought I too should chime in here one last time...
I'll leave it to you, Malcolm, Keith and others to debate out the issue of any
additional uncertainties, biases, etc. that might arise from RCS in the presence of
limited samples. That is beyond my range of expertise. But since this is a new and
relatively untested approach, and it is on the basis of this approach that other
estimates are being argued to be "underestimates", we would indeed have been remiss now
to point this out in our letter.
The wording "perilous" perhaps should be changed, by I very much stand by the overall
sentiment expressed by Malcolm in our piece with regard to RCS.
One very important additional point that Malcolm makes in his message is that
conservative estimates of uncertainties, appropriate additional caveats, etc. were
indeed all provided in MBH99, and I have always been careful to interpret our results in
the context of these uncertainties and caveats. IPCC '2001 was careful to do so to, and
based its conclusions within the context of the uncertainties (hence the choice of the
conservative term "likely" in describing the apparently unprecedented nature of late
20th century warmth) and, moreover, on the collective results of many independent
reconstructions. Briffa & Osborn would have you believe that IPCC '2001's conclusions in
this regard rested on MBH99 alone. Frankly, Keith and Tim, I believe that is unfair to
the IPCC, whether or not one cares about being fair to MBH or not.
What is unfortunate here then is that Esper et al has been "spun" i to argue that MBH99
underestimates the quantity it purports to estimate, full Northern Hemisphere annual
mean temperature. Given the readily acknowledged level of uncertainty in both estimates,
combined with the "apples and oranges" nature of the comparison between the two (which
I have sought to clarify in my letter to Science, and in my messages to you all, and the
comparison plot I provided), I believe it is either sloppy or disingenuous reasoning
to argue that this is the case. The fact that this sloppiness also readily serves the
interests of the skeptics is quite unfortunate, but it is indeed beside the point!
It would probably also be helpful for me to point out, without naming names, that many
of our most prominent colleagues in the climate research community, as well government
funding agency representatives, have personally contacted me over the past few weeks to
express their dismay at the way they believe this study was spun. I won't get into the
blame game, because there's more than enough of that to go around. But when the leaders
of our scientific research community and our funding managers personally alert us that
they believe the credibility of our field has been damaged, I think it is time for some
serious reflection on this episode.
that's my final 2 cents,
Mike
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.[2]shtml
References
1. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
2. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
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From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Ed Cook <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Your letter to Science
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 17:35:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Dear Ed, Tom, Keith, etc.
In keeping w/ the spirit of Tom's and Keith's emails, I wanted to stress, before we all
break for the weekend, that this is ultimately about the science, its not personal. If my
comments seemed to assail e.g. Keith's motives or integrity, etc. I believe that they were
misunderstood (as I tried to clarify that in my previous message), but I can see that
there was a potential for misunderstanding of my message (precision in wording is very
important) given the high levels of sensitivity in this debate. So I wanted to leave no
uncertainty about that. And of course, I very much apologize to Keith (and Tim) if they
took them my comments that way. They, again, were most decidedly not intended that way.
I hope we can resolve the scientific issues objectively, and w/out injecting or any
personal feelings into any of this. There are some substantial scientific differences here,
lets let them play out the way they are supposed to, objectively, and in the peer reviewed
literature.
Enjoy the weekend all.
cheers,
Mike
At 01:35 PM 4/12/xxx xxxx xxxx, Ed Cook wrote:
Hi Mike, Tom, etc,
Okay, I am quite happy to give this debate a rest, although I am sure that the issues
brought up will still be grounds for scientific debate. I admit to getting a bit riled
when I saw the ECS results on the MWP described as "perilous" because I regard that as
being an unfair characterization of the work presented. Be that as it may, my reply to
Science will be very carefully worded so as not to inflame the issues. Nuff said. Have a
good weekend. I certainly intend to do so.
Ed
Ed and others,
I thought I too should chime in here one last time...
I'll leave it to you, Malcolm, Keith and others to debate out the issue of any
additional uncertainties, biases, etc. that might arise from RCS in the presence of
limited samples. That is beyond my range of expertise. But since this is a new and
relatively untested approach, and it is on the basis of this approach that other
estimates are being argued to be "underestimates", we would indeed have been remiss now
to point this out in our letter.
The wording "perilous" perhaps should be changed, by I very much stand by the overall
sentiment expressed by Malcolm in our piece with regard to RCS.
One very important additional point that Malcolm makes in his message is that
conservative estimates of uncertainties, appropriate additional caveats, etc. were
indeed all provided in MBH99, and I have always been careful to interpret our results in
the context of these uncertainties and caveats. IPCC '2001 was careful to do so to, and
based its conclusions within the context of the uncertainties (hence the choice of the
conservative term "likely" in describing the apparently unprecedented nature of late
20th century warmth) and, moreover, on the collective results of many independent
reconstructions. Briffa & Osborn would have you believe that IPCC '2001's conclusions in
this regard rested on MBH99 alone. Frankly, Keith and Tim, I believe that is unfair to
the IPCC, whether or not one cares about being fair to MBH or not.
What is unfortunate here then is that Esper et al has been "spun" i to argue that MBH99
underestimates the quantity it purports to estimate, full Northern Hemisphere annual
mean temperature. Given the readily acknowledged level of uncertainty in both estimates,
combined with the "apples and oranges" nature of the comparison between the two (which
I have sought to clarify in my letter to Science, and in my messages to you all, and the
comparison plot I provided), I believe it is either sloppy or disingenuous reasoning
to argue that this is the case. The fact that this sloppiness also readily serves the
interests of the skeptics is quite unfortunate, but it is indeed beside the point!
It would probably also be helpful for me to point out, without naming names, that many
of our most prominent colleagues in the climate research community, as well government
funding agency representatives, have personally contacted me over the past few weeks to
express their dismay at the way they believe this study was spun. I won't get into the
blame game, because there's more than enough of that to go around. But when the leaders
of our scientific research community and our funding managers personally alert us that
they believe the credibility of our field has been damaged, I think it is time for some
serious reflection on this episode.
that's my final 2 cents,
Mike
At 10:21 AM 4/12/xxx xxxx xxxx, Ed Cook wrote:
Just a few comments here and then I'm done.
Dear Ed and Mike and others,
All of our attempts, so far, to estimate hemisphere-scale
temperatures for the period around 1000 years ago are
based on far fewer data than any of us would like. None
of the datasets used so far has anything like the
geographical distribution that experience with recent
centuries indicates we need, and no-one has yet found a
convincing way of validating the lower-frequency
components of them against independent data. As Ed
wrote, in the tree-ring records that form the backbone of
most of the published estimates, the problem of poor
replication near the beginnings of records is particularly
acute, and ubiquitous. I would suggest that this problem
probably cuts in closer to 1600 than 1400 in the several
published series. Therefore, I accept that everything we
are doing is preliminary, and should be treated with
considerable caution.
Therefore, I would guess that you would apply the word "perilous" to everyones'
large-scale NH reconstructions covering the past xxx xxxx xxxxyears including those that you
have been involved in. Why the sudden increase in caution now? It sounds very
self-serving to me for you to call ECS "perilous" and not describe every other
large-scale reconstruction in that way as well.
I differ from Ed, and his co-authors,
in believing that these problems have a special
significance for the particular implementation of RCS
they used, in the light of one of their conclusions that
depends heavily on that implementation.
As I understand what Ed, Keith and Hal Fritts have
written at various times about RCS, and from my own
limited experience with the method, it is extremely
important to have strong replication, and I don't see 50-70
samples probably from xxx xxxx xxxxtrees as a big sample. For
reference, most chronologies used in dendroclimatology
are based on xxx xxxx xxxxtrees, that is xxx xxxx xxxxsamples at 2 cores
per tree for a single "site", usually a few hectares.
Here are two passages from Briffa et al., 1992:
page 114, column 1, last paragraph, "For a chronology
composed of the same number of samples, one would
therefore expect a larger statistical uncertainty using this
approach than in a chronology produced using
standardization curves fitted to the data from individual
trees...............The RCS method therefore requires greater
chronology depth (i.e. greater sample replication) to
provide the same level of confidence in its representation
of the hypothetical "true" chronology." ECS mention this
issue.
As I said in my previous email, we hid nothing in terms of the uncertainty concerning
the pre-1200 interval. Are you suggesting that we should not have even shown those
results? If so, that is ridiculous.
page 114, column 1, third paragraph, there is a discussion
of the problems arising from applying RCS when pith age
is not known, "In the ring-width data, the final
standardization curve probably slightly underestimates
the width of young trees and could therefore impart a
small positive bias to the standardized ring-width indices
for young rings in a number of series. However, this
effect will be insignificant when the biased indices are
realigned according to calendar growth years and
averaged with many other series." The problem here is
that this latter condition is not met (in my view), and the
"small positive bias" that may be retained could turn out
to be important to the most controversial conclusion of
ECS (the Medieval question).
I can't speak for Jan here, but most of the data he used came from Schweingruber's lab.
I believe that pains were taken to estimate the pith offset and that Jan used this
information in his RCS analyses. Jan would be best to comment here. In any case, Jan has
done a number of experiments in which he has artificially added large pith offset errors
into the RCS analysis and the resulting bias is small. So, I do not believe that your
"view" is correct.
I also suspect that Keith
and colleagues underestimated both the size and
variability of the loss of years at the beginning of records,
but the point stands even if this is not so. So far as I can
see, ECS do not mention this issue, at least in the context
of a possible positive bias.
Are you claiming that the only possible bias is positive? I can show you examples of a
probable negative bias using RCS.
The discussion of RCS in the
supplementary materials seems to assume good
replication.
It was a generic description of the method. The replication is clearly shown in the
supplementary materials section as well as in the main paper. If you don't like the
replication, that is your opinion. I would love to have more replication as well. Who
wouldn't. But we did show the uncertainties, which you seem to ignore in your criticism.
Ironically, the ECS estimates of warmth in the MWP are not that dissimilar to those seen
in MBH, as ECS Fig. 3 shows. Are the MBH estimates of MWP warmth also similarly biased?
ECS, as Ed rightly points out, clearly indicate, in both
words and diagrams at several points in their paper and in
the supplementary materials, that the number of sites and
number of samples they used decreases sharply before
1200. Even so, ECS gives prominence (second sentence
of the abstract, for example) to the reconstruction in that
very period, and makes a comparison with the magnitude
of 20th-century warming. All the methods, and their
realizations so far, have significant problems. In our letter
(Mike and I) we draw attention to a specific problem with
this implementation of RCS that has a special bearing on
the reconstruction of a period to which ECS have drawn
attention. Hence the strong note of caution about the ECS
conclusion on the comparison between the 10th/11th and
late 20th centuries.
I hope it's clear from this that I don't disagree with the
general proposition that all existing reconstructions of
hemipsphere-scale temperatures 1000 years ago (or even
for all the first half of the second millennium AD) should
be viewed as very preliminary. If anyone is interested I
attach a short note on the replication in the year AD 1000
of records used in MBH99 to give an idea of what we are
up against.
There is obviously a lot more we can debate about here. I will simply stop here by
saying that I stand by the results shown in ECS and will say so in my reply to your
letter, pointing out that the use of the word "perilous" could be just as easily be
applied to MBH.
We all have a lot to do. I see four important tasks - 1)
more investigation of the strengths and limitations of
methods like RCS and age-banding - for example, how
many samples would have been enough in this case, does
the RC change through time? and so on; 2) use of tree-
ring records where the loss of low-frequency information
is least - those with long segments from open stands; 3)
the search for tree-ring parameters without age/size
related trend; 4) the development of completely
independent proxies with intrinsically better low-
frequency fidelity.
Cheers, Malcolm
The Briffa et al reference is to the 1992 paper, Climate
Dynamics, 7:xxx xxxx xxxx
Hi Ed,
OK--thanks for your response. I'll let Malcolm respond to the
technical issues regarding RC. I'm not really qualified to do so
myself anyway. Your other points are well taken...
Cheers,
Mike
At 12:09 PM 4/11/xxx xxxx xxxx, Edward Cook wrote:
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the reply. I too do not want to see anything
personal in our disagreements. It would be a shame if it got to
that and it shouldn't. I don't think that the science we are
talking about is sufficiently known yet to claim the "truth",
which is why we are having some of our disagreements. I mainly
wanted to clarify some issues relating to some criticisms of the
ECS results that I thought were not totally fair. My biggest
complaint is with Malcolm's contribution to your letter because it
really isn't fair to use such words as "perilous". ECS did not
hide anything and the uncertainties are clearly indicated in EGS
> Figs. 2 and 3. So, you can make your own judgement. However,
Malcolm's opinion does not invalidate the ECS record. If Malcolm's
statement is correct, than ALL previous estimates of NH
temperature over the past 1000 years are "perilous", especially
before AD 1400 when the number of series available declines
significantly in most records.
Ed
Ed,
It will take some time to digest these comments, but my
initial response is one of some disappointment. I will
resist the temptation to make the letter to Science
available to the others on this list, because of my fears of
violating the embargo policy (I know examples of where doing so
has led to Science retracting a piece form publication). So thanks
for also resisting the temptation to do so...
But I must point out that the piece by Malcolm and me
is very similar in its content to the letter of clarification that
you and I originally crafted to send to Science some weeks ago,
before your co-author objected to your involvement! If there is no
objection on your part, I'd be happy to send that to everyone,
because it is not under consideration in Science (a quite
unfortunate development, as far as I'm concerned). The only real
change from that version is the discussion of the use of RCS. That
is in large part Malcolm's contribution, but I stand behind what
> Malcolm says. I think there are some real sins of omission with
regard to the use of RCS too, and it would be an oversight on our
part now to comment on these.
Finally, with regard to the scaling issues, let me simply
attach a plot which speaks more loudly than several
pages possibly could The plot takes Epser et al (not
smoothed, but the annual values) and scales it against the
full Northern Hemisphere instrumental record 1xxx xxxx xxxx
annual mean record, and compares against the entire 20th
century instrumental record (1xxx xxxx xxxx), as well as with
MBH99 and its uncertainties.
Suppose that Esper et al is indeed representative of the
fullNorthern Hemisphere annual mean, as MBH99
purports to be. To the extent that differences emerge
between the two in assuming such a scaling, I interpret
them as differences which exist due to the fact that the
extratropical Northern Hemisphere series and full
Northern Hemisphere series likely did not co-vary in the
past the same way they co-vary in the 20th century (when
both are driven predominantly, in a relative sense, by
anthropogenic forcing, rather than natural forcing and
internal variability). What the plot shows is quite
remarkable. Scaled in this way, there is remarkably little
difference between Esper et al and MBH99 in the first
place (the two reconstructions are largely within the error
estimates of MBH99!)!, but moreover, where they do
differ, this could be explainable in terms of patterns of
enhanced mid-latitude continental response that were
discussed, for example, in Shindell et al (2001) in
Science last December. So I think this plot says a lot. Its
say that there are some statistically significant
differences, but certainly no grounds to use Esper et al to
contradict MBH99 or IPCC '2001 as, sadly, I believe at
least one of the published pieces tacitly appears to want
to do.
It is shame that such a plot, which I think is a far more
meaningful comparison of the two records, was not
shown in either Esper et al or the Briffa & Osborn
commentary. I've always given the group of you adequate
opportunity for commentary on anything we're about to
publish in Nature or Science. I am saddened that many of
my colleagues (and, I have always liked to think friends)
didn't affort me the same opportunity before this all
erupted in our face. It could have been easily avoided.
But that's water under the bridge.
>
Finally, before any more back-and-forths on this, I want
to make sure that everyone involved understands that
none of this was in any way ever meant to be personal, at
least not on my part (and if it ever has, at least on my
part, seemed that way, than I offer my apologies--it was
never intended that way). This is completely about the
"science". To the extent that I (and/or others) feel that the
science has been mis-represented in places, however, I personally
will work very hard to make sure that a more balanced view is
available to the community. Especially because the implications
are so great in this case. This is what I sought to do w/ the NYT
piece and my NPR interview, and that is what I've sought to do
(and Malcolm to, as far as I'm concerned) with the letter to
Science. Being a bit sloppy w/ wording, and omission, etc. is
something we're all guilty of at times. But I do consider it
somewhat unforgivable when it is obvious how that sloppiness can
be exploited. And you all know exactly what I'm talking about!
So, in short, I think are some fundamental issues over
which we're in disagreement, and where those exist, I will
not shy away from pointing them out. But I hope that is
not mis-interpreted as in any way personal.
I hope that suffices,
>
Mike
p.s. It seemed like an omission to not cc in Peck and
Scott Rutherford on this exchange, so I've done that. I
hope nobody minds this addition...
At 10:57 AM 4/11/xxx xxxx xxxx, Edward Cook wrote:
Hi Mike and Malcolm,
I have received the letter that you sent to Science
and will respond to it here first in some detail and
later in edited and condensed form in Science.
Since much of what you comment and criticize on
has been disseminated to a number of people in
your (Mike's) somewhat inflammatory earlier
emails, I am also sending this lengthy reply out to
everyone on that same email list, save those at
Science. I hadn't responded in detail before, but
do so now because your criticisms will soon be in
the public domain. However, I am not attaching
your letter to Science to this email since that is
not yet in the public domain. It is up to you to
send out your submitted letter to everyone if you
wish.
I must say at the beginning that some parts of
your letter to Science are as "flawed" as your
claims about Esper et al. (hereafter ECS). The
Briffa/Osborn perspectives piece points out an
important scaling issue that indeed needs further
examination. However, to claim as you do that
they show that the ECS 40-year low-pass
temperature reconstruction is "flawed" begs the
question: "flawed" by how much? It is not at all
clear that scaling the annually resolved RCS
chronology to annually resolved instrumental
temperatures first before smoothing is the correct
way to do it. The ECS series was never created to
examine annual, or even decadal, time-scale
temperature variability. Rather, as was clearly
indicated in the paper, it was created to show how
one can preserve multi-centennial climate
variability in certain long tree-ring records, as a
refutation of Broecker's truly "flawed" essay. As
ECS showed in their paper (Table 1), the high-
frequency correlations with NH mean annual
temperatures after 20-year high-pass filtering is
only 0.15. That result was expected and it makes
no meaningful difference if one uses only extra-
tropical NH temperature data. So, while the
amplitude of the temperature-scaled 40-year low-
pass ECS series might be on the high end (but
still plausible given the gridded borehole
temperature record shown in Briffa/Osborn),
scaling on the annually resolved data first would
probably have the opposite effect of excessively
> reducing the amplitude. I am willing to accept an
intermediate value, but probably not low enough
to satisfy you. Really, the more important result
from ECS is the enhanced pattern of multi-
centennial variability in the NH extra-tropics over
the past 1100 years. We can argue about the
amplitude later, but the enhanced multi-centennial
variability can not be easily dismissed. I should
also point out, again, that you saw Fig. 3 in ECS
BEFORE it was even submitted to Science and
never pointed out the putative scaling "flaw" to
me at that time.
With regards to the issue of the late 20th century
warming, the fact that I did not include some
reference to or plot of the up-to-date instrumental
temperature data (cf. Briffa/Osborn) is what I
regard as a "sin of omission". What I said was
that the estimated temperatures during the MWP
in ECS "approached" those in the 20th century
portion of that record up to 1990. I don't consider
the use of "approached" as an egregious
overstatement. But I do agree with you that I
should have been a bit more careful in my
wording there. As you know, I have publicly
stated that I never intended to imply that the
MWP was as warm as the late 20th century (e.g.,
> my New York Times interview). However, it is a
bit of overkill to state twice in the closing
sentences of the first two paragraphs of your
letter that the ECS results do not refute the
unprecedented late 20th century warming. I
would suggest that once is enough.
ECS were also very clear about the extra-tropical
nature of their data. So, what you say in your
letter about the reduced amplitude in your series
coming from the tropics, while perhaps worth
pointing out again, is beating a dead horse.
However, I must say that the "sin of omission" in
the Briffa/Osborn piece concerning the series
shown in their plot is a bit worrying. As they say
in the data file of series used in their plot (and in
Keith's April 5 email response to you),
Briffa/Osborn only used your land temperature
estimates north of 20 degrees and recalibrated the
mean of those estimates to the same domain of
land-only instrumental temperatures using the
same calibration period for all of the other non-
borehole series in the same way. I would have
preferred it if they had used your data north of
30N to make the comparisons a bit more one-to-
one. However, I still think that their results are
interesting. In particular, they reproduce much of
the reduced multi-centennial temperature
variability seen in your complete NH
reconstruction. So, if the amplitude of scaled
ECS multi-centennial variability is far too high
(as you would apparently suggest), it appears that
it is also too low in your estimates for the NH
extra-tropics north of 20N. I think that we have
to stop being so aggressive in defending our
series and try to understand the strengths and
weaknesses of each in order to improve them.
That is the way that science is supposed to work.
I must admit to being really irritated over the
criticism of the ECS tree-ring data standardized
using the RCS method. First of all, ECS
acknowledged up front the declining available
data prior to 1200 and its possible effect on
interpreting an MWP in the mean record. ECS
also showed bootstrap confidence intervals for
the mean of the RCS chronologies and showed
where the chronologies drop out. Even allowing
for the reduction in the number of represented
sites before 1400 (ECS Fig. 2d), and the
reduction in overall sample size (ECS Fig. 2b),
there is still some evidence for significantly
above average growth during two intervals that
can be plausibly assigned to the MWP. Of course
> we would like to have had all 14 series cover the
past 1xxx xxxx xxxxyears. This doesn't mean that we
can't usefully examine the data in the more
weakly replicated intervals. In any case, the
replication in the MWP of the ECS chronology is
at least as good as in other published tree-ring
estimates of large-scale temperatures (e.g., NH
extra-tropical) covering the past 1000+ years. It
also includes more long tree-ring records from the
NH temperate latitudes than ever before. So to
state that "this is a perilous basis for an estimate
of temperature on such a large geographic scale"
is disingenuous, especially when it is unclear how
many millennia-long series are contributing the
majority of the temperature information in the
Mann/Bradley/Hughes (MBH) reconstruction
prior to AD 1400. Let's be balanced here.
I basically agree with the closing paragraph of
your letter. The ECS record was NEVER
intended to refute MBH. It was intended, first
and foremost, to refute Broecker's essay in
Science that unfairly attacked tree rings. To this
extent, ECS succeeded very well. The
comparison of ECS with MBH was a logical
thing to do given that it has been accepted by the
> IPCC as the benchmark reconstruction of NH
annual temperature variability and change over
the past millennium. Several other papers have
made similar comparisons between MBH and
other even more geographically restricted
estimates of past temperature. So, I don't
apologize in the slightest for doing so in ECS.
The correlations in Table 2 between ECS and
MBH were primarily intended to demonstrate the
probable large-scale, low-frequency temperature
signal in ECS independent of explicitly
calibrating the individual RCS chronologies
before aggregating them. The results should
actually have pleased you because, for the xxx xxxx xxxx
year band, ECS and MBH have correlations of
0.60 to 0.68, depending on the period used.
Given that ECS is based on a great deal of new
data not used in MBH, this result validates to a
reasonable degree the temperature signal in MBH
in the xxx xxxx xxxxyear band over the past 1000 years.
Given the incendiary and sometimes quite rude
emails that came out at the time when ECS and
Briffa/Osborn were published, I could also go
into the whole complaint about how the review
process at Science was "flawed". I will only say
that this is a very dangerous game to get into and
complaints of this kind can easily cut both ways.
I will submit an appropriately edited and
condensed version of this reply to Science.
Regards,
Ed
--
=================================
Dr. Edward R. Cook
Doherty Senior Scholar
Tree-Ring Laboratory
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, New York 10964 USA
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
Email: drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
=================================
_____________________________________________
__________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_____________________________________________
__________________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
7770FAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.sht
ml
Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:esper-
scaledcompare1980.jpg (JPEG/JVWR) (0008FDE3)
--
=================================
Dr. Edward R. Cook
Doherty Senior Scholar
Tree-Ring Laboratory
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, New York 10964 USA
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
Email: drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
=================================
> ____________________________________________________
___________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
____________________________________________________
___________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (434)
xxx xxxx xxxx
[2]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Malcolm Hughes
Professor of Dendrochronology
Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
xxx xxxx xxxx
fax xxx xxxx xxxx
--
==================================
Dr. Edward R. Cook
Doherty Senior Scholar
Tree-Ring Laboratory
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, New York 10964 USA
Email: drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
==================================
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[3]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[4]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.[5]shtml
References
1. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.sht
2. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
3. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0
4. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
5. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1018889093.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Ed Cook <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Your letter to Science
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 12:44:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
HI Tim,
Thanks for your message. Yes, you guys have us beat on the early monday end of things!
Your points are all taken. I think we all agree there is much work left to be done, more
than enough for all of us to continue to be involved in constructive collaboration, etc.
Scott and I, for example, are almost done writing up the work based on your visit w/ us
last year, and will send the initial draft on to you, Keith, and the others involved in the
near future. It will be a good chance to try to address a lot of these questions in an
article of adequate length to discuss the nuances that unfortunately cannot be addressed in
a shorter piece.
I also appreciate your more detailed comments about the comparisons, etc. Your points are
all reasonable ones. We can maintain an honest difference about how well those points were
conveyed in the Science piece (for example, you can imagine how the statement in your piece
"This record has a smaller amplitude of century-to-century variability, and is consistently
at or near the upper limit of alternate records produced by other researchers" might indeed
have been interpreted as setting MBH99 apart as, in your words, an "outlier").
We have good reason to believe that our reconstruction *will* in fact nderestimate
extratropical temperature means but far less so full globe/hemisphere-means prior to the
18th century because the basis functions that primarily set the extratropics apart from the
full hemispheric patterns (e.g., NAO type patterns and other anomaly patterns largely
carried by EOFs #2 and #3) start to drop out from our basis set prior to the 18th century,
while the pattern that best resolves the full global and/or hemispheric mean (with note
from MBH98, particularly large loadings primarily in the tropics and subtropics) still
remains. That is why we have never published an *extratropical* temperature reconstruction
prior to the 18th century. I would be happy to discuss this point with you and Keith and
others in more detail. Thus, I have compared Esper et al w/ our records in the manner
described in my previous email, which I think allows us to diagnose the extent to which
differing high-latitude and full-hemispheric patterns may, at times, explain the somewhat
modest differences between the records when similarly scaled to the full hemispheric
1xxx xxxx xxxxmean, and always, within the context of the diagnosed uncertainties. There is no
guarentee, as you say, that the uncertainties are correct, but I personally believe they'll
stand up over time. You can call me on this 10 years from now, and somebody will owe
somebody a beer...
In any case, I hope and fully expect we can all continue to all be engaged in constructive
interaction & hopefully continued collaboration. It will require some sensitivity on all
our part to the larger issues surrounding our work, and the way it gets presented to the
broader community, but I don't think that should be all that difficult.
I look forward to these more constructive interactions. I'll do my best to foster them,
Mike
At 01:57 PM 4/15/02 +0100, Tim Osborn wrote:
Dear all,
well, the time zone may let you have the last word before the weekend, but we can get
the first word in on a Monday morning!
At 22:35 12/04/02, Michael E. Mann wrote:
In keeping w/ the spirit of Tom's and Keith's emails, I wanted to stress, before we all
break for the weekend, that this is ultimately about the science, its not personal. If
my comments seemed to assail e.g. Keith's motives or integrity, etc. I believe that they
were misunderstood (as I tried to clarify that in my previous message), but I can see
that there was a potential for misunderstanding of my message (precision in wording is
very important) given the high levels of sensitivity in this debate. So I wanted to
leave no uncertainty about that. And of course, I very much apologize to Keith (and Tim)
if they took them my comments that way. They, again, were most decidedly not intended
that way.
Thanks for clarifying that, Mike. I think that both Keith and I interpreted your
earlier e-mail as being more critical of us than you actually meant it to be.
Most issues surrounding the recent Esper et al. and Briffa & Osborn pieces seem to have
been covered adequately already. There are just a couple of issues on which I'd like to
add a few comments, hopefully clarifying the situation rather than opening up more
avenues for debate.
The first relates to the purpose and style of the Briffa & Osborn piece. Perspectives
are brief, non-technical and not peer-reviewed. Our instructions were: "The Perspective
should provide an overview of recent research in the field and explain to the general
reader why the work is particularly exciting." Is it any surprise then that we should
focus on the new insights provided by the Esper et al. work, and that it suggests a
different climate history than earlier work? And that the constraints of the
perspectives format (in terms of length, audience and style) prevented us from listing
ALL the caveats and uncertainties related to this and earlier reconstructions and that
might be of relevance to their intercomparison? I don't think it is surprising, nor do
I think we should be criticised for it.
Moreover, despite the constraints of the perspectives format, I think we were very
careful with our wording to avoid misleading the reader. The reference to the IPCC, for
example, was not at all sloppy - the opposite, in fact, since it was very carefully
worded: the IPCC Synthesis Report is referred to, rather than the full TAR, and it is
quite true that there is a focus on the reconstruction of Mann et al. in the former. As
Mike says, IPCC conclusions were based on other work too. But I'd guess that many of
the readers of our perspective won't have read the full IPCC report, so we thought it
valid to focus on the difference between the new work and that shown in the Synthesis
Report (which more will have seen). To do this is certainly not unfair to the IPCC. It
would only have been unfair if we had implied that the IPCC had ignored this new work -
but of course we weren't doing that, because how could one expect the TAR to consider
work that is published a year after the TAR itself? We were similarly careful with our
wording in our brief mention of the MWP, by saying it is "more pronounced" in Esper et
al. - this doesn't mean it is warmer than the others (and thus has no implications for
the IPCC conclusion of recent unusual warmth), rather it is pronounced because it is
followed by stronger cooling.
The second issue is our re-calibration of the reconstructions. While it hasn't been
explicitly stated, I get the impression that this is considered by some to be a poor
thing to do. The particular re-calibration we do has a number of effects, including
making the Mann et al. reconstruction appear more consistently at the top of the range
of alternatives. But please let me assure you (Mike, Ray and Malcolm) that the reason
for re-calibrating the records is definitely *not* to make your record appear as an
outlier, and I hope you believe me. Indeed, in Jones, Osborn & Briffa (2001: Science
292, xxx xxxx xxxx) we showed various NH records *without* applying our re-calibration.
We produced our first comparison of records for an earlier Science perspectives piece in
1999 (Briffa & Osborn, 1999) and thought it would be useful to do a re-calibration to
remove some of the reasons for inter-reconstruction differences (which can be due to:
different proxy data, different statistical methods, different calibration target and
different calibration period). The latter two reasons were removed by re-calibrating
against a common target series and over a common period. We updated this in Briffa et
al. (2001) and acknowledged that the target series (in terms of its spatial and seasonal
definition) may not be optimal in all cases. Indeed, it may be especially sub-optimal
for Mann et al., because their reconstruction approach combines the proxy records to
optimally reconstruct full NH, annual mean T (whereas we have selected land north of
20N, warm-season T as our target for the recalibration). Despite this, we felt
justified in doing the recalibration because the Mann et al. series still outperformed
the others in terms of its correlation with the instrumental record over the calibration
period! In our latest piece, we have updated the intercomparison in two ways (as well
as including new series): (i) we took the spatially-resolved gridded reconstructions of
Mann et al. and extracted only land boxes north of 20N; and (ii) we used annual, not
warm-season, temperature as the target. The first of these (as explained by Keith and I
in an earlier e-mail, which is repeated below because it didn't get sent to all of you
firs time round) deals with all the points raised by Mike about tropical versus
extratropical differences. I would again argue that we were not sloppy, because these
changes to our intercomparison were carefully thought out.
So that explains what we have done and why. There is some sensitivity, clearly, to
calibration choices, which implies to me that the true uncertainty ranges are probably
larger than those estimated solely from the statistical properties of calibration
residuals (as used by Briffa et al., and [I think] by Mann et al.). There is clearly
more progress to be made!
Best regards to you all
Tim
------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 17:17:55 +0100
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,rkerr@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,bhanson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Briffa & Osborn piece
Cc: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Dear Mike, (and interested colleagues)
Given the list of people to whom you have chosen to circulate your message(s), we
thought we should make a short, somewhat formal, response here. I am happy to reserve
my informal response until we are face to face! We did not respond earlier because we
had more pressing tasks to deal with. This is not the place to go into a long or
over-detailed response to all of your comments but a few brief remarks might help to
clear up a couple of misconceptions.
You consider our commentary on Ed and Jan's paper
"more flawed than even the paper itself"
on the basis that scaling the relationship between full Northern Hemisphere and
extratropical Northern Hemisphere is *much* more problematic than even any of the
seasonal issues we discuss. In fact we did not do this. The curve labelled Mann99 in
our figure was, in fact, based on the average of only the land areas, north of 20
degrees N, extracted from your spatially-resolved reconstructions. We then scaled it by
calibration against the instrumental annual temperatures from the same region. This is,
just as you stress in your comments on the Esper et al. paper, what should have been
done. We think that this single point addresses virtually of all your concerns. We
can, of course, argue about what this means for the pre-1400 part of your
reconstruction, when only 1 EOF was reconstructed, but the essential message is that we
did our best to exclude the tropics (and the oceans too!) from your series so that it
could more readily be compared with the other records.
The fact that we have used only the extra-tropical land from your data is not clear from
the text, so we can see why you may not have appreciated this, but we think you will
concede that this fact negates much of what you say and that we acted "more correctly"
than you realised. Blame *Science* for being so mean with their space allocation if you
want! Remember that this was an unrefereed piece and we felt justified in concentrating
on one issue; that of the importance of the method of scaling and its effect on apparent
"absolute" reconstruction levels. In our draft, we went on to say that this was crucial
for issues of simple model sensitivity studies and climate detection, citing the work of
Tom Crowley and Myles Allen, but this fell foul of the editor's knife.
You also express concerns about the calibration of Esper et al. (e.g., you say "if the
authors had instead used the actual (unsmoothed) instrumental record for the
extratropical northern hemisphere to scale their record, their reconstruction would be
much closer to MBH99").
This point is wholly consistent with our discussion in the perspective piece, and indeed
we show that in absolute terms the records are closer when Esper et al. is calibrated
using unsmoothed data but since the variance is also reduced, the significance of the
differences may be just as high.
Finally, we have to say that we do not feel constrained in what we say to the media or
write in the scientific or popular press, by what the sceptics will say or do with our
results. We can only strive to do our best and address the issues honestly. Some
"sceptics" have their own dishonest agenda - we have no doubt of that. If you believe
that I, or Tim, have any other objective but to be open and honest about the
uncertainties in the climate change debate, then I am disappointed in you also.
Best regards
Keith (and Tim)
------------------------------------------
Dr Timothy J Osborn | phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Senior Research Associate | fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
Climatic Research Unit | e-mail: t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
School of Environmental Sciences | web-site:
University of East Anglia __________| [1]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/
Norwich NR4 7TJ | sunclock:
UK | [2]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[3]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.[4]shtml
References
1. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/
2. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm
3. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
4. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1018893474.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Ed Cook <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Your letter to Science
Date: Mon Apr 15 13:57:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Dear all,
well, the time zone may let you have the last word before the weekend, but we can get the
first word in on a Monday morning!
At 22:35 12/04/02, Michael E. Mann wrote:
In keeping w/ the spirit of Tom's and Keith's emails, I wanted to stress, before we all
break for the weekend, that this is ultimately about the science, its not personal. If
my comments seemed to assail e.g. Keith's motives or integrity, etc. I believe that they
were misunderstood (as I tried to clarify that in my previous message), but I can see
that there was a potential for misunderstanding of my message (precision in wording is
very important) given the high levels of sensitivity in this debate. So I wanted to
leave no uncertainty about that. And of course, I very much apologize to Keith (and Tim)
if they took them my comments that way. They, again, were most decidedly not intended
that way.
Thanks for clarifying that, Mike. I think that both Keith and I interpreted your earlier
e-mail as being more critical of us than you actually meant it to be.
Most issues surrounding the recent Esper et al. and Briffa & Osborn pieces seem to have
been covered adequately already. There are just a couple of issues on which I'd like to
add a few comments, hopefully clarifying the situation rather than opening up more avenues
for debate.
The first relates to the purpose and style of the Briffa & Osborn piece. Perspectives are
brief, non-technical and not peer-reviewed. Our instructions were: "The Perspective should
provide an overview of recent research in the field and explain to the general reader why
the work is particularly exciting." Is it any surprise then that we should focus on the
new insights provided by the Esper et al. work, and that it suggests a different climate
history than earlier work? And that the constraints of the perspectives format (in terms
of length, audience and style) prevented us from listing ALL the caveats and uncertainties
related to this and earlier reconstructions and that might be of relevance to their
intercomparison? I don't think it is surprising, nor do I think we should be criticised
for it.
Moreover, despite the constraints of the perspectives format, I think we were very careful
with our wording to avoid misleading the reader. The reference to the IPCC, for example,
was not at all sloppy - the opposite, in fact, since it was very carefully worded: the IPCC
Synthesis Report is referred to, rather than the full TAR, and it is quite true that there
is a focus on the reconstruction of Mann et al. in the former. As Mike says, IPCC
conclusions were based on other work too. But I'd guess that many of the readers of our
perspective won't have read the full IPCC report, so we thought it valid to focus on the
difference between the new work and that shown in the Synthesis Report (which more will
have seen). To do this is certainly not unfair to the IPCC. It would only have been
unfair if we had implied that the IPCC had ignored this new work - but of course we weren't
doing that, because how could one expect the TAR to consider work that is published a year
after the TAR itself? We were similarly careful with our wording in our brief mention of
the MWP, by saying it is "more pronounced" in Esper et al. - this doesn't mean it is warmer
than the others (and thus has no implications for the IPCC conclusion of recent unusual
warmth), rather it is pronounced because it is followed by stronger cooling.
The second issue is our re-calibration of the reconstructions. While it hasn't been
explicitly stated, I get the impression that this is considered by some to be a poor thing
to do. The particular re-calibration we do has a number of effects, including making the
Mann et al. reconstruction appear more consistently at the top of the range of
alternatives. But please let me assure you (Mike, Ray and Malcolm) that the reason for
re-calibrating the records is definitely *not* to make your record appear as an outlier,
and I hope you believe me. Indeed, in Jones, Osborn & Briffa (2001: Science 292, xxx xxxx xxxx)
we showed various NH records *without* applying our re-calibration.
We produced our first comparison of records for an earlier Science perspectives piece in
1999 (Briffa & Osborn, 1999) and thought it would be useful to do a re-calibration to
remove some of the reasons for inter-reconstruction differences (which can be due to:
different proxy data, different statistical methods, different calibration target and
different calibration period). The latter two reasons were removed by re-calibrating
against a common target series and over a common period. We updated this in Briffa et al.
(2001) and acknowledged that the target series (in terms of its spatial and seasonal
definition) may not be optimal in all cases. Indeed, it may be especially sub-optimal for
Mann et al., because their reconstruction approach combines the proxy records to optimally
reconstruct full NH, annual mean T (whereas we have selected land north of 20N, warm-season
T as our target for the recalibration). Despite this, we felt justified in doing the
recalibration because the Mann et al. series still outperformed the others in terms of its
correlation with the instrumental record over the calibration period! In our latest piece,
we have updated the intercomparison in two ways (as well as including new series): (i) we
took the spatially-resolved gridded reconstructions of Mann et al. and extracted only land
boxes north of 20N; and (ii) we used annual, not warm-season, temperature as the target.
The first of these (as explained by Keith and I in an earlier e-mail, which is repeated
below because it didn't get sent to all of you firs time round) deals with all the points
raised by Mike about tropical versus extratropical differences. I would again argue that
we were not sloppy, because these changes to our intercomparison were carefully thought
out.
So that explains what we have done and why. There is some sensitivity, clearly, to
calibration choices, which implies to me that the true uncertainty ranges are probably
larger than those estimated solely from the statistical properties of calibration residuals
(as used by Briffa et al., and [I think] by Mann et al.). There is clearly more progress
to be made!
Best regards to you all
Tim
------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 17:17:55 +0100
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,rkerr@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,bhanson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Briffa & Osborn piece
Cc: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Dear Mike, (and interested colleagues)
Given the list of people to whom you have chosen to circulate your message(s), we
thought we should make a short, somewhat formal, response here. I am happy to reserve
my informal response until we are face to face! We did not respond earlier because we
had more pressing tasks to deal with. This is not the place to go into a long or
over-detailed response to all of your comments but a few brief remarks might help to
clear up a couple of misconceptions.
You consider our commentary on Ed and Jan's paper
"more flawed than even the paper itself"
on the basis that scaling the relationship between full Northern Hemisphere and
extratropical Northern Hemisphere is *much* more problematic than even any of the
seasonal issues we discuss. In fact we did not do this. The curve labelled Mann99 in
our figure was, in fact, based on the average of only the land areas, north of 20
degrees N, extracted from your spatially-resolved reconstructions. We then scaled it by
calibration against the instrumental annual temperatures from the same region. This is,
just as you stress in your comments on the Esper et al. paper, what should have been
done. We think that this single point addresses virtually of all your concerns. We
can, of course, argue about what this means for the pre-1400 part of your
reconstruction, when only 1 EOF was reconstructed, but the essential message is that we
did our best to exclude the tropics (and the oceans too!) from your series so that it
could more readily be compared with the other records.
The fact that we have used only the extra-tropical land from your data is not clear from
the text, so we can see why you may not have appreciated this, but we think you will
concede that this fact negates much of what you say and that we acted "more correctly"
than you realised. Blame *Science* for being so mean with their space allocation if you
want! Remember that this was an unrefereed piece and we felt justified in concentrating
on one issue; that of the importance of the method of scaling and its effect on apparent
"absolute" reconstruction levels. In our draft, we went on to say that this was crucial
for issues of simple model sensitivity studies and climate detection, citing the work of
Tom Crowley and Myles Allen, but this fell foul of the editor's knife.
You also express concerns about the calibration of Esper et al. (e.g., you say "if the
authors had instead used the actual (unsmoothed) instrumental record for the
extratropical northern hemisphere to scale their record, their reconstruction would be
much closer to MBH99").
This point is wholly consistent with our discussion in the perspective piece, and indeed
we show that in absolute terms the records are closer when Esper et al. is calibrated
using unsmoothed data but since the variance is also reduced, the significance of the
differences may be just as high.
Finally, we have to say that we do not feel constrained in what we say to the media or
write in the scientific or popular press, by what the sceptics will say or do with our
results. We can only strive to do our best and address the issues honestly. Some
"sceptics" have their own dishonest agenda - we have no doubt of that. If you believe
that I, or Tim, have any other objective but to be open and honest about the
uncertainties in the climate change debate, then I am disappointed in you also.
Best regards
Keith (and Tim)
------------------------------------------
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From: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: SSI Alert: IPCC Chair Vote]
Date: Mon Apr 22 18:14:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: s.raper
Phil,
I can't quite see what all the fuss is about Watson - why should he be re-nominated
anyway? Why should not an Indian scientist chair IPCC? One could argue the CC issue is
more important for the South than for the North. Watson has perhaps thrown his weight
about too much in the past. The science is well covered by Susan Solomon in WGI, so why
not get an engineer/economist since many of the issues now raised by CC are more to do with
energy and money, than natural science.
If the issue is that Exxon have lobbied and pressured Bush, then OK, this is regrettable
but to be honest is anyone really surprised? All these decisions about IPCC chairs and
co-chairs are deeply political (witness DEFRA's support of Martin Parry for getting the
WGII nomination).
Mike
At 07:17 20/04/02 +0100, you wrote:
There is more on the BBC Sci/Tech web site.
Phil
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 18:24:xxx xxxx xxxx
From: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U)
X-Accept-Language: en
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Sarah Raper <s.raper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,
Mike Hulme <m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: [Fwd: SSI Alert: IPCC Chair Vote]
You may not have seen this latest piece of politicalization by the
Bushies.
Tom.
*************************
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: SSI Alert: IPCC Chair Vote
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 18:00:xxx xxxx xxxx
From: "SSI Mailbox" <ssi@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
******************* EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ********************
ISSUE: Today - April 19, 2002, the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) plenary voted for Dr. Rajendra
Pachauri as the sole chair of the IPCC. Dr. Pachauri, an
economist and engineer, will replace Dr. Robert Watson, an
atmospheric chemist, as chair of the IPCC. This outcome was
actively sought by the Bush Administration at the behest of
the most conservative elements of the fossil fuel industry.
This development threatens to undermine the scientific
credibility and integrity of the IPCC and may weaken the job
this extraordinary body has done to bring the world's
attention to one of the most pressing environmental
problems.
ACTION: Monitor your local paper and respond to news stories
with a letter-to-the-editor.
MAIN MESSAGE: Given the Bush Administration's consistent
opposition to climate change mitigation, it is especially
imperative at this time that the scientific community and
Dr. Pachauri work together to ensure that the IPCC remains a
strong and credible scientific process.
DEADLINE: As soon as possible after the story runs in your
paper -- preferably the same day but no later than a day or
two after.
******************************************
*** THE ISSUE ***
According to a report by Associated Press today (appended
below), Dr. Rajendra Pachauri was elected as Chair of the
IPCC at a plenary meeting in Geneva. As you would be aware
from our earlier SSI alerts of the past several weeks, this
follows on from intense lobbying of the US government by the
fossil fuel industry to remove Dr. Robert Watson as Chair.
Although reports from Geneva are still sketchy, our sources
on the ground tell us that there was intense behind-the-
scenes lobbying by Saudi Arabia, with assistance from Don
Pearlman -- a well known oil and gas lobbyist with strong
connections to industry-backed organizations opposed to
climate change mitigation. Through their maneuvering, the
co-chair compromise approach -- comprised of former chair
Dr. Robert Watson and Dr. Pachauri -- was not considered.
As a result of this election, there is considerable concern
in the climate science and environmental communities --
reinforced by the intensive lobbying from fossil fuel
interests on this decision -- that the Bush Administration's
lack of support for former IPCC Chair Dr. Robert Watson
signals a more general lack of support for the IPCC as a
credible international scientific assessment process that
provides governments with sound information on climate
science, impacts, and solutions.
By supporting Dr. Pachauri for primarily political purposes,
the Bush Administration has seriously threatened the
scientific credibility of the IPCC process. The conservative
fossil fuel interests should be exposed for their role in
influencing the US government's stance on this issue, and
the IPCC process must remain a scientifically credible and
non-politicized process.
The next IPCC Climate Change Assessment is due out in five
years, and it is the chair's role to oversee this complex
process. The scientific community's voice is important in
this issue to ensure that the IPCC process remains strong
under the leadership of Dr. Pachauri and that the Bush
Administration does not erode the effectiveness of this
important international body.
*** THE ACTION ***
-- Monitor your local paper and respond to news stories with
a letter-to-the-editor.
Information on how and to whom to submit a LTE is usually
found right on the Letters Page in your paper. Many papers
now accept letters via email. If you can't find the
information you need, simply call the paper and ask how to
go about submitting a letter in response to a recently
published article.
To increase the chances that your letter will be published,
do the following:
- keep it under 200 words and stay focused on one or two
main points you'd like to make;
- focus on a local angle, if possible, that adds something
new to the story that appeared in your paper;
- be sure to include your name, address, and daytime phone
number; the paper will contact you before printing your
letter; and
- submit the letter on the same day the story appears, if
possible.
[For additional help with writing an effective letter to the
editor, you may turn to the reference guide on the SSI
member page at <[1]http://www.ucsusa.org/ssimembers/index.html >.]
-- MAIN MESSAGE: Given the Bush Administration's consistent
opposition to climate change mitigation, it is especially
imperative at this time that the scientific community and
Dr. Pachauri work together to ensure that the IPCC remains a
strong and credible scientific process.
-- TIMING: Your letter to the editor should reach your paper
within a few days of the publication of the story to
increase the chances of it being published.
-- SPECIAL NOTE: If your paper did not carry the story at
all yet, send an LTE describing the story and emphasizing
that this issue is of great interest to the paper's
subscribers.
*** SUPPORTING MESSAGES ***
-- [Be sure to include a description of your scientific
expertise, your involvement with the IPCC process, or the
importance of the climate issue to your community.]
-- For the past 10 years, the IPCC's science has been the
foundation for sound policymaking on the climate issue. The
IPCC's unique intergovernmental approach to scientific
consensus has worked amazingly well but is now threatened.
-- It is disturbing that the Bush Administration sought and
received advice from the fossil fuel industry on the
leadership of an important scientific body such as the IPCC.
A politicized IPCC threatens the integrity and credibility
of the scientific process.
-- There are fears that it will now be easier for the US to
distance itself from the IPCC process. You may point out
that the US already rejected the Kyoto protocol last year.
-- It is vital that the scientific process for the next
Assessment Report (due out in another five years) not be
compromised so that the IPCC continues to produce sound
science on climate change.
-- The credibility of the IPCC's Third Assessment Report
(TAR) findings were strongly affirmed by the US National
Academy of Sciences (NAS), which published its supportive
report in response to President Bush's request for an
independent assessment on the state of climate science.
*** SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION ***
-- Dr Rajendra K. Pachauri is an Indian engineer and
economist. Pachauri, formerly one of the five vice chairs of
the IPCC, is highly regarded but will be the first non-
atmospheric chemist as chair of the IPCC.
-- For more information on the ExxonMobil memo urging the
Bush Administration to remove Dr. Watson from his position
as IPCC Chair, please see
< [2]http://www.nrdc.org/media/docs/020403.pdf >.
-- For information on the Saudi/Pearlman connection, see the
summary by Jeremy Leggett, author of "The Carbon War", at
< [3]http://www.carbonwar.com/ccchrono.html >.
-- IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was
established in 1988 under the auspices of the United Nations
Environment Programme and the World Meteorological
Organization for the purpose of assessing "the scientific,
technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the
understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change."
To date, the IPCC has issued three comprehensive
assessments. The first assessment report (FAR) was released
in 1990, the second assessment report (SAR) was released in
1996, and the third assessment report (TAR) was released in
2001. These assessments are based on "published and peer
reviewed scientific technical literature"
For more information see < [4]http://www.ipcc.ch >
******************
NOTE: Please send us an email message that tells us what
action you took. If you actually send a letter, please send
us a "blind copy." (A blind copy simply means that you do
not indicate anywhere on your letter that you are sending a
copy to us.) Send to: ssi@xxxxxxxxx.xxx or UCS, 2 Brattle
Square, Cambridge, MA 02xxx xxxx xxxx(attn. Jason Mathers).
CHANGE OF EMAIL ADDRESS: Help us keep you posted! If your
email address will soon change, or if you'd like us to use a
different address, please let us know by sending a message
to ssi@xxxxxxxxx.xxx with your new address. Thanks!
***********
Associated Press
Fri Apr 19, 1:18 PM ET
U.S. scientist voted off international climate panel
By JONATHAN FOWLER, Associated Press Writer
GENEVA - A U.S. scientist was voted off an international
climate panel Friday following what campaigners claimed was
pressure from the oil industry and Washington.
Atmospheric scientist Robert Watson was seeking re-election
as head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
World Meteorological Organization (news - web sites)
spokeswoman Mo Lagarde said Watson was defeated by Indian
challenger Rajendra Pachauri. Some 76 countries supported
Pachauri, while 49 voted for Watson in the secret ballot,
she said.
Seven nations voted for Jose Goldemberg, a Brazilian (news -
web sites) who entered the race this week.
The WMO and the U.N. Environment Program jointly host the
IPCC's offices and organized the Geneva meeting.
Environmental groups have accused the administration of
President George W. Bush (news - web sites) of caving in to
a request from Exxon Mobil that it try to remove Watson, a
leading expert on global warming (news - web sites), because
he had consistently warned governments of the dangers of
climate change.
"The fossil fuel industry and the U.S. government will be
celebrating their success in kicking out Bob Watson, an
experienced scientist who understood that urgent action is
needed to tackle global climate change," said Kate Hampton,
international climate co-ordinator for British-based Friends
of the Earth (news - web sites). "The Bush administration
and its friends would rather shoot the messenger than listen
to the message," Hampton said in a statement.
The Swiss-based Worldwide Fund for Nature said it was
worried by the "apparent politicization" of the IPCC.
"WWF is concerned that oil and gas interests had too much to
say in the removal of Dr. Watson as chairman of what should
be an impartial, scientific body," said Jennifer Morgan,
Director of WWF's Climate Program.
But, Morgan said, the "IPCC is a vibrant group of scientists
and WWF looks forward to working closely with Dr. Pachauri
to protect the integrity of the IPCC and ensure that it
continues to produce sound science on climate change."
The U.S. State Department said earlier this month that it
would support Pachauri, who was the Indian government's
nominee, to become the next chair.
Two weeks ago, the Natural Resources Defense Council, a
Washington, D.C.-based environmental group, said the White
House's Council on Environmental Quality received a memo
from Exxon Mobil in February 2001 that asked, "Can Watson be
replaced now at the request of the U.S.?"
The memo, which the group said it obtained through the
Freedom of Information Act, also recommended that the
administration "restructure the U.S. attendance at upcoming
IPCC meetings to assure none of the Clinton/Gore proponents
are involved in any decisional activities."
U.S. officials were unavailable for comment.
Watson has been an outspoken proponent of the idea that
fossil fuel emissions contribute to rising global
temperatures. He has led the panel since 1996 and is also
the chief scientist of the World Bank (news - web sites).
Pachauri is an engineer and an economist and is the director
of the Tata Energy Research Institute in New Delhi, India.
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 xxx xxxx xxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 xxx xxxx xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
References
1. http://www.ucsusa.org/ssimembers/index.html
2. http://www.nrdc.org/media/docs/020403.pdf
3. http://www.carbonwar.com/ccchrono.html%A0
4. http://www.ipcc.ch/
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From: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: s.torok
Subject: In Tyndall
Date: Sat May 18 17:25:xxx xxxx xxxx
Simon,
A version of this for In Tyndall please - you should add the relevant EPSRC web site if you
can track it down.
Mike
_________________________________
EPSRC invests in adventurous ideas
EPSRC is to establish an adventurous research fund. A total of
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From: Ed Cook <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Esper et al. and Mike Mann
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 13:20:xxx xxxx xxxx
<x-flowed>
Hi Keith,
Of course, I agree with you. We both know the probable flaws in
Mike's recon, particularly as it relates to the tropical stuff. Your
response is also why I chose not to read the published version of his
letter. It would be too aggravating. The only way to deal with this
whole issue is to show in a detailed study that his estimates are
clearly deficient in multi-centennial power, something that you
actually did in your Perspectives piece, even if it was not clearly
stated because of editorial cuts. It is puzzling to me that a guy as
bright as Mike would be so unwilling to evaluate his own work a bit
more objectively.
Ed
>I have just read this lettter - and I think it is crap. I am sick to
>death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical
>area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature
>representative ) tropical series. He is just as capable of
>regressing these data again any other "target" series , such as the
>increasing trend of self-opinionated verbage he has produced over
>the last few years , and ... (better say no more)
>Keith
>
--
==================================
Dr. Edward R. Cook
Doherty Senior Scholar
Tree-Ring Laboratory
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, New York 10964 USA
Email: drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
==================================
</x-flowed>
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From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: AGU abstract
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 10:16:42 +0100
Mike,
Checked with Keith and Tim. The abstract is like one we would write - leaves all
options
open as to what will be presented. At least AGU and EGS don't charge to get abstracts
printed. AMS have so many missing now with their charges that the book of abstracts is
ridiculous. Fine for all three of us to be there and we look forward to seeing some
results
in the autumn. This will be when the real action begins.
The CCDD meeting in early Nov. might be at a good time to discuss some results.
Add an 'of' between choice and actual on the third line.
Cheers
Phil
At 19:56 12/08/xxx xxxx xxxx, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Dear all,
The following is an abstract for a talk I've been invited to give at the winter AGU
meeting in a session on "Climate of the Past 2000 Years". I would like to summarize the
collaborative work that was begun by Scott, Tim and myself a couple summers ago during
Tim's visit here. Scott is working on finalizing the results of our analyses now, and a
draft should be available for review shortly that compares reconstructions based on our
covariance-based reconstruction method, using (i) multiproxy, (ii) MXD, and (ii)
combined multiproxy+MXD datasets for different (cold, warm, annual) target seasonal
windows. I'd like to invite everyone listed below to be authors on both this abstract,
and the paper that we're in the process of drafting, describing the results. I've kept
the abstract intentionally vague, so that we can work out an interpretation of the
results that we're all comfortable with in the months ahead, prior to the talk, and
submission of the paper.
I look forward to confirmation of your interest in being a co-author, and any feedback
you have. I'd like to submit this by the end of the week, which will be my last
opportunity to do so prior to the AGU abstract deadline, owing to my travel schedule.
thanks in advance for getting back to me ASAP.
best regards,
Mike
_____________________________________________________________________________
Progress in Proxy-Based Reconstruction of Surface Temperature Variations in Past
Centuries
Michael E. Mann
Raymond Bradley
Keith Briffa
Malcolm Hughes
Philip Jones
Timothy Osborn
Scott Rutherford
Results are presented from a set experiments designed to control for the various factors
that may influence reconstructions of large-scale temperature patterns in past
centuries, including (a) the choice actual proxy data used, (b) the reconstruction
methodology, (c) the spatial domain of the reconstruction and (d) the seasonal window
targeted. These experiments compare results based both on the global multiproxy data set
used by Mann and coworkers and the extratropical Northern Hemisphere maximum latewood
tree-ring density set used by Briffa and coworkers. Estimates of hemispheric mean
temperature trends are formed both through averaging of large-scale patterns
reconstructed from full proxy data network, and through simple compositing of regional
temperature reconstructions. Northern hemisphere mean estimates are compared for the
full Northern hemisphere (tropics and extratropics, land and ocean), and extratropical
continents only, and using various (cold-season half year, warm-season half year, and
annual mean) seasonal targets for the reconstructions. Implications of these experiments
for the robustness of proxy-based reconstructions of past large-scale temperature trends
are discussed.
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 xxx xxxx xxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 xxx xxxx xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
References
1. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
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From: Rashit Hantemirov <rashit@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Yamal paper for The Holocene special issue
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 17:56:18 +0500
Reply-to: Rashit Hantemirov <rashit@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Dear Keith,
thank you very much for editing our paper.
It's a pity you strike your name off the list of authors, you
make an important contribution to writing paper. Your corrections
and additions surely improve paper.
I would only notice the next sentence (page 8):
'The low interannual variability and the minimum occurrence of
cold extremes during the 20th century, argue that the most recent
decades of this long summer record represent the most favourable
climate conditions for tree growth within the last four
millennia.'
I'm not sure that this statement follows unambiguous from results
presented in this paper. Because mean temperatures during last
decades, according presented reconstruction, are not exceptional.
Besides, e.g. period about 1700 BC, according this
reconstruction, represent probably the same conditions taking
into account low variability, low occurrence of extremes and high
mean temperature.
May be to soften this statement and replace 'the most favourable'
with something like 'highly favourably' or 'probably the most
favourable'?
Thank you once more for invaluable assistance.
Best regards,
Rashit M. Hantemirov
(I'm sorry for the late answer, I just come back from the trip to
the north.)
Lab. of Dendrochronology
Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology
8 Marta St., 202
Ekaterinburg, 620144, Russia
e-mail: rashit@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Fax: +7 (34xxx xxxx xxxx; phone: +7 (34xxx xxxx xxxx
http://ipae.uran.ru/8personalies/dendro.html#3
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From: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "Iain Brown (UKCIP)" <iain.brown@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: temporal interpolation for UKCIP scenarios
Date: Wed Sep 11 12:39:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: geoff.jenkins@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,x.lu,j.turnpenny
Iain (and Geoff),
Definitive explanations are always dangerous! The reasoning behind this is as follows:
- the report only analysed and pictured seasonal and annual data (DJF,MAM, etc.) [in fact,
nearly all published maps of climate model outputs show changes in seasonal - 3-month -
averages]. This applying a uniform filter over 90 or 360 days.
- the requested datasets are at monthly time-steps. The default option for this is in
effect applying a uniform 30-day filter. [one might also conceive of weekly or daily
time-step files - e.g. changes in Week 13 for the 2050s for precip. for Medium-High or
changes for Julian day number 256 for the 2080s for Tmin for Low].
- these are all arbitrary choices of course, dictated by convention. But the important
point it seems to me is again a signal to noise issue - the shorter the time-averaging
period, the weaker the S/N ratio [i.e., we have more confidence that averaged over a year,
Tmin in the UK will increase by, say, 2.7degC for certain scenario, than that for the same
scenarios Tmin on 13 June will increase - on average - by 2.6degC and on 14 June only by
2.3degC - is this difference between 2.6 on 13 June and 2.3 on 14 June really meaningful?
No - it is most likely due to noise - natural variability].
- this reasoning suggests that as the time-averaging period decreases, one should pay less
attention to small differences between adjacent time-averaged periods, e.g. if June precip.
goes down by 10%, is the fact that July precip. goes down by 20% and August by 5% really
meaningful?
-
At 10:13 11/09/02 +0100, Iain Brown (UKCIP) wrote:
Mike,
For the UKCIP Scenarios datasets - both 98 and 02 - temporal interpolation
was applied to the raw model data in the form of a xxx xxxx xxxxfilter. This had
the effect of smoothing out monthly values so that there are not as abrupt
transitions between adjacent months.
Can you provide us with the definitive explanation for the interpolation?
Some users (eg. in the recent London study) have noted that there are
differences between the maps they have derived from the data and the maps in
the UKCIP02 report.
best wishes,
Iain
-----------------------------------
Dr. Iain Brown
UK Climate Impacts Programme
12 St. Michael's St.
Oxford
OX1 2DU