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: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Andr
Original Filename: 1061300885.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Crowley <tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: POLL ON SOON-BALIUNAS
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 09:48:05 +0100
Cc: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Michael Oppenheimer <omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Raymond Bradley <rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Jonathan Overpeck <jto@u.arizona.edu>, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,Ben Santer <santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Steve Schneider <shs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,Caspar Ammann <ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, hegerl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Tom,
I once met Soon at a meeting organised by the ESA in Tenerife. I think he gave a talk
-
but only think, so it wasn't memorable in any way. As you say they don't come to the
regular meetings like EGU/S, AGU, AMS etc. I only went to Tenerife as the organisers paid
for me to go.
Citation ratings vary (there are several different scales/indicators as well) a lot
from year to year for most journals. I've never figured out how the counting is done wrt
the highly cited lists that Tom. W., Kevin and I are on. Do only first authorships count
for
example? Even with a common name like mine people still get it wrong and mistakes
persist.
Surprisingly Jim Hansen doesn't make the above list ([1]http://www.highlycited.com), but
then
he normally drops his E.
There are few more journals (QSR, Climate Change, IJC, AAR to give a few) where
paleo papers also appear.
Cheers
Phil
At 10:43 13/08/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Michael E. Mann wrote:
I checked this out prior to my senate hearing. Their science citations in the climate
literature are poor, as one would hope and expect.
Interestingly, they both drop their second initials when publishing in the climate
literature so that their names don't turn in up in ISI if you do a search on their
publications in the astronomy literature (which use the full initials)--apparently,
they don't want their astronomy colleagues to be aware that they're moonlighting as
supposed climatologists...
Their numbers are better in the astronomy literature, though Soon's numbers even here
are mediocre.
Baliunas had some well-cited publications more than a decade ago. This is her work on
the use of sun-like stars as a model for solar variability, etc., which is well
referenced in the astrophysics community. However, most of these appear to be her Ph.D.
work, and appear to have been published w/ her Ph.D adviser.
Not much evidence however that she has made any useful, independent contribution since
then. There are some additional papers she's published on time series analysis of solar
signals--looks like the kind of stuff you might expect to see from a graduate student
first-year research project....
In my opinion, its would be a mistake to evaluate these on their citations numbers in
astronomy. We should focus on their numbers in the climate literature, which are the
only ones relevant when discussing the issue of how their work on climate is received by
their fellow scientists,
mike
At 08:15 AM 8/13/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Tom Wigley wrote:
Might be interesting to see how frequently Soon and Baliunas, individually, are cited
(as astronomers). Are they any good in their own fields?
Perhaps we could start referring to them as astrologers (excusable as ... 'oops, just a
typo')
Tom.
++++++++++++++++
Tom Crowley wrote:
Hi there,
we need some data on Soon and Baliunas. one of my concerns is that they only publish in
low impact journals and completely bypass the normal give and take of presentations at
open scientific meetings (for example, I think I have probably heard 100 presentations
overall from the people on this mailing list).
it is therefore very important to inquire for the sake or our exchanges with
reporters/legislators etc as to how often any of you may have heard Soon or Baliunas
give a talk in an open meeting, where they could defend their analyses.
please respond to me as to whether you have heard either of them present something on
their paleo-analyses (I think I heard Baliunas speak once on her solar-type star work,
but that doesn't count).
I will let you know the results of the poll so that we may all be on the same grounds
with respect to the data and reporting such information to press inquiries/legislators
etc.
further fyi I list below the journal impact for six geophysical/climate/paleoclimate
journals:
Paleoceanography 3.821
J. Climate 3.250
J. Geophysical Res. (Climate) 2.245
Geophysical Research Letters 2.150
The Holocene 1.852
Climate Research 1.016
Science and Nature are much higher (26-30) but there citation numbers are I believe
inflated with respect to our field because their citation ranking also includes many
very widely cited biology publications.
hope to hear from you soon, Tom
______________________________________________________________
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
[2]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.highlycited.com/
2. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
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From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: VS: [Climate Sceptics] Mann & Jones on 1800 yrs proxies]
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2003 04:04:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Gavin Schmidt <gavin@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Michael Oppenheimer <omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Mike MacCracken <mmaccrac@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Crowley <tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, cfk@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jhansen@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Ellen Mosley-Thompson <thompson.4@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Gabi Hegerl <hegerl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Stefan Rahmstorf <rahmstorf@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, jto@u.arizona.edu, Eric Steig <steig@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Thanks Tom,
I agree--the issue is not completely settled, and thanks for the reference (any possibility
you can send me a reprint?). The point here of course is that we are talking a potential
effect, w/ as you say, at best a weak signal--hardly the dominating overprint that is
argued by the Idso brothers! (by the way, weren't they a circus act at one point??),
mike
At 12:48 PM 8/22/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Tom Wigley wrote:
Mike,
Thanks for your clarifications.
With regard to the CO2 fertilization effect on tree ring width, I wrote a paper a number
of years ago pointing out that there were signal-to-noise problems in identifying and
quantifying such factors.
Wigley, T.M.L., Jones, P.D. and Briffa, K.R., 1987: Detecting the effects of acidic
deposition and CO2-fertilization on tree growth. (In) Methods of Dendrochronology.
Vol. 1, Proceedings of the Task Force Meeting on Methodology of Dendrochronology:
Krak
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From: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: reconstruction uncertainties
Date: Fri Aug 29 16:33:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Attachments: Mann uncertainty.doc
Hi Mike,
after a few bits of holiday here and there, I've now had time to complete my (initial) approach to estimating reconstruction errors on your NH temperature reconstruction. This is all based on the calibration residuals that you kindly sent me a few weeks ago.
My rationale for doing this was that I wanted uncertainty/error estimates that were dependent on the time scale being considered (e.g. a decadal mean, an annual mean, a 30-year mean, etc.). I didn't think you had published timescale-dependent errors, hence my attempt.
A second reason is that I wanted to be able to model (i.e., stochastically generate) time series of the errors, with appropriate timescale characteristics. Again, I didn't think that I could get this from your published results.
The attached document summarises the progress I've made. There are a few questions I have, and I'm concerned that the reduction in uncertainty with increasing time scale is too great. Perhaps one should be ultra conservative and have no reduction with time scale? Yet surely there ought to be some cancelling of partly uncorrelated errors? The document is not meant to form part of any paper on this (I hope to use the errors in a paper, but the point of the paper is on trend detection, not estimating errors), it just seemed appropriate to write it up like this to inform you of what I've done so far.
Any comments or criticisms will be very useful.
Cheers
Tim
Original Filename: 1062527448.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>
Subject: Re: reconstruction uncertainties
Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2003 14:30:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Scott Rutherford <srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Hi Tim
Thanks for sending this. Unfortunately, I don't really have the time look into any of this
in detail, but let me offer the following additional explanation which will hopefully
clarify the nature of any differences between our results. I fear that I may not have been
clear enough in my previous explanation.
The reason that our uncertainty estimates reduce little fwith increasing timescale for the
earlier networks is that the effective degrees of freedom are diminished sharply by the
redness of the calibration residuals for networks prior to AD 1600 and earlier. But unlike
you, wee do not model the residuals as an AR process--this may the source of some of the
differences.
Back to AD 1600 (and later networks), the calibration residuals pass for "white noise" ,
and the estimates follow simply from the residual uncalibrated variance, and the reduction
of variance upon averaging follows standard sqrt(N) statistics.
Prior to that, the networks failed the test. So we decomposed the calibration residuals
into a "low-frequency" band (all timescales longer than 40 years which are not
distinguishable from secular timescales, since I had a roughly 80 years series and was
evaluating the spectrum using a multiple-taper estimate with a spectral bandwidth of +/-2
Rayleigh frequencies). We then estimated the enhancement of unresolved variance in the
low-frequency band relative to the nominal white noise level. The enhancement was about a
factor of 5-6 or so for the earlier networks, as I recall. To get the component of
uncertainty for the low-frequency band alone (timescales longer than 40 years), I simply
took that enhancement factor x the nominal unresolved calibration variance x the bandwidth
of the "low-frequency" band (0.025 cycle/year). This yields a reduction in variance that is
far less than the nominal "sqrt N" reduction applied to the individual annual
uncertainties. Of course, one could calculate the equivalent N' (effective temporal
degrees of freedom) that this implies in a model of the residuals as AR(1) red noise, but
we didn't take this approach. We modeled it as a simple step-increase spectrum (w/ the
boundary at f=0.025 cycle/yr). Modeling the residuals as red noise would, my guess is,
generally yield the same result, but it might have the effect of dampening the estimated
enhancement of unresolved variance at the longest timescales. In any case, it should yield
similar, but it would be very surprising if identical(!), results, consistent w/ your
observations.
My guess for the difference in the AD 1600 network is that, based on the spectrum test, we
did not reject the white noise null hypothesis for the residuals. So there was no variance
enhancement factor for that, or subsequent, networks. It would appear that your method
argues for significant serial correlation in that case. Not sure why we come to different
conclusions in this case (perhaps using different criteria for testing for the significance
of redness in the spectrum/serial correlation), but that's probably the reason...
I hope that clarifies this. Please keep me in the loop on this. I've copied to Scott, who
may have some additional insights here, since we've been dealing w/ these issues now in the
RegEM estimates (Scott:did we ever reject the white noise null hypothesis in the residuals
for any of our proxy-based NH reconstrucitions in the paper submited to J. Climate? I don't
recall).
Thanks,
mike
At 04:33 PM 8/29/2003 +0100, you wrote:
Hi Mike,
after a few bits of holiday here and there, I've now had time to complete my (initial)
approach to estimating reconstruction errors on your NH temperature reconstruction.
This is all based on the calibration residuals that you kindly sent me a few weeks ago.
My rationale for doing this was that I wanted uncertainty/error estimates that were
dependent on the time scale being considered (e.g. a decadal mean, an annual mean, a
30-year mean, etc.). I didn't think you had published timescale-dependent errors, hence
my attempt.
A second reason is that I wanted to be able to model (i.e., stochastically generate)
time series of the errors, with appropriate timescale characteristics. Again, I didn't
think that I could get this from your published results.
The attached document summarises the progress I've made. There are a few questions I
have, and I'm concerned that the reduction in uncertainty with increasing time scale is
too great. Perhaps one should be ultra conservative and have no reduction with time
scale? Yet surely there ought to be some cancelling of partly uncorrelated errors? The
document is not meant to form part of any paper on this (I hope to use the errors in a
paper, but the point of the paper is on trend detection, not estimating errors), it just
seemed appropriate to write it up like this to inform you of what I've done so far.
Any comments or criticisms will be very useful.
Cheers
Tim
Dr Timothy J Osborn
Climatic Research Unit
School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
e-mail: t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
web: [1]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/
sunclock: [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.shtml
Attachment Converted: "c:documents and settingstim osbornmy documentseudoraattachMann
uncertainty.doc"
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
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From: Edward Cook <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: An idea to pass by you
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 08:32:xxx xxxx xxxx
<x-flowed>
Hi Keith,
After the meeting in Norway, where I presented the Esper stuff as
described in the extended abstract I sent you, and hearing Bradley's
follow-up talk on how everybody but him has fucked up in
reconstructing past NH temperatures over the past 1000 years (this is
a bit of an overstatement on my part I must admit, but his air of
papal infallibility is really quite nauseating at times), I have come
up with an idea that I want you to be involved in. Consider the
tentative title:
"Northern Hemisphere Temperatures Over The Past Millennium: Where Are
The Greatest Uncertainties?"
Authors: Cook, Briffa, Esper, Osborn, D'Arrigo, Bradley(?), Jones
(??), Mann (infinite?) - I am afraid the Mike and Phil are too
personally invested in things now (i.e. the 2003 GRL paper that is
probably the worst paper Phil has ever been involved in - Bradley
hates it as well), but I am willing to offer to include them if they
can contribute without just defending their past work - this is the
key to having anyone involved. Be honest. Lay it all out on the table
and don't start by assuming that ANY reconstruction is better than
any other.
Here are my ideas for the paper in a nutshell (please bear with me):
1) Describe the past work (Mann, Briffa, Jones, Crowley, Esper, yada,
yada, yada) and their data over-laps.
2) Use the Briffa&Osborn "Blowing Hot And Cold" annually-resolved
recons (plus Crowley?) (boreholes not included) for comparison
because they are all scaled identically to the same NH extra-tropics
temperatures and the Mann version only includes that part of the NH
(we could include Mann's full NH recon as well, but he would probably
go ballistic, and also the new Mann&Jones mess?)
3) Characterize the similarities between series using unrotated
(maybe rotated as well) EOF analysis (correlation for pure
similarity, covariance for differences in amplitude as well) and
filtering on the reconstructions - unfiltered, 20yr high-pass, xxx xxxx xxxx
bandpass, 100 lowpass - to find out where the reconstructions are
most similar and different - use 1st-EOF loadings as a guide, the
comparisons of the power spectra could also be done I suppose
4) Do these EOF analyses on different time periods to see where they
differ most, e.g., running 100-year EOF windows on the unfiltered
data, running 300-year for 20-lp data (something like that anyway),
and plot the 1st-EOF loadings as a function of time
5) Discuss where the biggest differences lie between reconstructions
(this will almost certainly occur most in the 100 lowpass data),
taking into account data overlaps
6) Point out implications concerning the next IPCC assessment and EBM
forcing experiments that are basically designed to fit the lower
frequencies - if the greatest uncertainties are in the >100 year
band, then that is where the greatest uncertainties will be in the
forcing experiments
7) Publish, retire, and don't leave a forwarding address
Without trying to prejudice this work, but also because of what I
almost think I know to be the case, the results of this study will
show that we can probably say a fair bit about <100 year
extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we
believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know fuck-all about what
the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know
with certainty that we know fuck-all).
Of course, none of what I have proposed has addressed the issue of
seasonality of response. So what I am suggesting is strictly an
empirical comparison of published 1000 year NH reconstructions
because many of the same tree-ring proxies get used in both seasonal
and annual recons anyway. So all I care about is how the recons
differ and where they differ most in frequency and time without any
direct consideration of their TRUE association with observed
temperatures.
I think this is exactly the kind of study that needs to be done
before the next IPCC assessment. But to give it credibility, it has
to have a reasonably broad spectrum of authors to avoid looking like
a biased attack paper, i.e. like Soon and Balliunas.
If you don't want to do it, just say so and I will drop the whole
idea like a hot potato. I honestly don't want to do it without your
participation. If you want to be the lead on it, I am fine with that
too.
Cheers,
Ed
--
==================================
Dr. Edward R. Cook
Doherty Senior Scholar and
Director, 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: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Edward Cook <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Fwd: Re: Fwd: Soon & Baliunas
Date: Wed Sep 3 15:54:xxx xxxx xxxx
Hi Ed,
first all, yes I agree that we need a paper that takes a more objective look at where we
are now and how we can take things forward in terms of NH temperature reconstructions (and
possibly global, SH, spatial etc.).
As Keith said, we (mainly I so far) have been planning our version of this (hopefully)
"objective assessment", and by chance I was sketching out a vague outline of its possible
content. We've been keeping this fairly close to our chests for now, so please keep our
plans/ideas to yourself for the moment. There is partial overlap between our ideas and
yours, so it might be good to do this jointly. Anyway, my current ideas are a number of
forum articles, the first comparing existing reconstructions but without going into more
depth, and the other three looking at the way forward (i.e. what should we attempt to do to
improve them):
Forum piece (1): Comparison of existing reconstructions
This has most overlaps with your ideas, though I hadn't thought of it being so
comprehensive. I was thinking more of:
(a) comparing original series.
(b) comparing them after our recalibration to common target data, including discussion of
why some things don't change much (e.g. relative positioning of reconstructions), though
amplitudes can change - and of course the comparison of Mann et al. with and without
oceans/tropics.
(c) maybe a bit on comparison with boreholes, though maybe not.
(d) uncertainty estimates and how these may decrease with time scale and hence not all
reconstructions lie in the Mann et al. uncertainty ranges.
Forum piece (2): Selection of predictand and predictor data
(a) What to try to reconstruct and why it matters - e.g. will we get the wrong spectral
shape if we reconstruct ocean SST from land-based proxies. Plus some on seasonality,
though Jones, Osborn and Briffa cover part of that issue (are you aware of that paper, in
press with JGR?).
(b) What proxies should be used - e.g. does throwing in "poor" proxies cause a problem with
simple averaging, weighted averaging and multivariate regression approaches. Plus does
using precipitation proxies to reconstruct temperature result in the wrong spectral shape?
Forum piece (3): Reconstruction methods
Something here on different methods (simple averaging, multivariate regression type
approaches) and different implementation choices (e.g. calibration against trends/filtered
data). Not entirely sure about this, but it would not be new work, just would critically
appraise the methods used to date and what their theoretical/potential problems/advantages
might be.
Forum piece (4): Estimating uncertainty
Again, not entirely sure yet, but this must emphasise the absolute requirement to estimate
AND USE uncertainty when comparing reconstructions against observations or simulations
etc. Then something about how to do it, contrasting using calibration residuals,
verification residuals, parameter uncertainty, with the type of approach that you've taken
(bootstrap uncertainty, or measures of the EPS) to look at the common signal, with
additional uncertainty of how the common signal differs from the predictand.
So that's it!! Perhaps rather ambitious, so maybe a reduction to certain key points might
be required. I was deliberately avoiding any review of tree-ring contributions and
low-frequency per se, thinking that you and Keith would be taking the lead on that kind of
review.
One final think to mention, is that the emails copied below and the attached file might be
of interest to you as an example of something that *might* go in a comparison paper of
existing reconstructions. It's shows how the recalibrated average of existing
reconstructions differs from the average of existing calibrated reconstructions. You'll
see from Mike Mann's initial request below that he was thinking of it as a contribution to
the EOS rebuttal of Soon and Baliunas, but I've not heard much from him since. Also Tom
Crowley was very interests in this composite of the reconstructions, and I started to
converse with him about it but never finished estimating the uncertainty range on the
composite series and kind of stopped emailing him. But I guess either of them might
reproduce this idea sometime, if it suits them.
A visit to talk face to face about all these things would be good. Keith and I have been
talking about how to fit a visit in.
Cheers
Tim
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 16:16:16 +0000
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Crowley <tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Phil Jones
<p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
From: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Soon & Baliunas
Cc: Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
This is an excellent idea, Mike, IN PRINCIPLE at least. In practise, however, it raises
some interesting results (as I have found when attempting this myself) that may be
difficult to avoid getting bogged down with discussing.
The attached .pdf figure shows an example of what I have produced (NB. please don't
circulate this further, as it is from work that is currently being finished off -
however, I'm happy to use it here to illustrate my point).
I took 7 reconstructions and re-calibrated them over a common period and against an
observed target series (in this case, land-only, Apr-Sep, >20N - BUT I GET SIMILAR
RESULTS WITH OTHER CHOICES, and this re-calibration stage is not critical). You will
have seen figures similar to this in stuff Keith and I have published. See the coloured
lines in the attached figure.
In this example I then simply took an unweighted average of the calibrated series, but
the weighted average obtained via an EOF approach can give similar results. The average
is shown by the thin black line (I've ignored the potential problems of series covering
different periods). This was all done with raw, unsmoothed data, even though 30-yr
smoothed curves are plotted in the figure.
The thick black line is what I get when I re-calibrate the average record against my
target observed series. THIS IS THE IMPORTANT BIT. The *re-calibrated* mean of the
reconstructions is nowhere near the mean of the reconstructions. It has enhanced
variability, because averaging the reconstructions results in a redder time series
(there is less common variance between the reconstructions at the higher frequencies
compared with the lower frequencies, so the former averages out to leave a smoother
curve) and the re-calibration is then more of a case of fitting a trend (over my
calibration period 1xxx xxxx xxxx) to the observed trend. This results in enhanced
variability, but also enhanced uncertainty (not shown here) due to fewer effective
degrees of freedom during calibration.
Obviously there are questions about observed target series, which series to
include/exclude etc., but the same issue will arise regardless: the analysis will not
likely lie near to the middle of the cloud of published series and explaining the
reasons behind this etc. will obscure the message of a short EOS piece.
It is, of course, interesting - not least for the comparison with borehole-based
estimates - but that is for a separate paper, I think.
My suggestion would be to stick with one of these options:
(i) a single example reconstruction;
(ii) a plot of a cloud of reconstructions;
(iii) a plot of the "envelope" containing the cloud of reconstructions (perhaps also the
envelope would encompass their uncertainty estimates), but without showing the
individual reconstruction best guesses.
How many votes for each?
Cheers
Tim
At 15:32 12/03/03, Michael E. Mann wrote:
p.s. The idea of both a representative time-slice spatial plot emphasizing the spatial
variability of e.g. the MWP or LIA, and an EOF analysis of all the records is a great
idea. I'd like to suggest a small modification of the latter:
I would suggest we show 2 curves, representing the 1st PC of two different groups, one
of empirical reconstructions, the other of model simulations, rather than just one in
the time plot.
Group #1 could include:
1) Crowley & Lowery
2) Mann et al 1999
3) Bradley and Jones 1995
4) Jones et al, 1998
5) Briffa et al 200X? [Keith/Tim to provide their preferred MXD reconstruction]
6) Esper et al [yes, no?--one series that differs from the others won't make much of a
difference]
I would suggest we scale the resulting PC to the CRU 1xxx xxxx xxxxannual Northern
Hemisphere mean instrumental record, which should overlap w/ all of the series, and
which pre-dates the MXD decline issue...
Group #2 would include various model simulations using different forcings, and with
slightly different sensitivities. This could include 6 or so simulation results:
1) 3 series from Crowley (2000) [based on different solar/volcanic reconstructions],
2) 2 series from Gerber et al (Bern modeling group result) [based on different assumed
sensitivities]
1) Bauer et al series (Claussen group EMIC result) [includes 19th/20th century land use
changes as a forcing].
I would suggest that the model's 20th century mean is aligned with the 20th century
instrumental N.Hem mean for comparison (since this is when we know the forcings best).
I'd like to nominate Scott R. as the collector of the time series and the performer of
the EOF analyses, scaling, and plotting, since Scott already has many of the series and
many of the appropriate analysis and plotting tools set up to do this.
We could each send our preferred versions of our respective time series to Scott as an
ascii attachment, etc.
thoughts, comments?
thanks,
mike
At 10:08 AM 3/12/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Thanks Tom,
Either would be good, but Eos is an especially good idea. Both Ellen M-T and Keith
Alverson are on the editorial board there, so I think there would be some receptiveness
to such a submission.t
I see this as complementary to other pieces that we have written or are currently
writing (e.g. a review that Ray, Malcolm, and Henry Diaz are doing for Science on the
MWP) and this should proceed entirely independently of that.
If there is group interest in taking this tack, I'd be happy to contact Ellen/Keith
about the potential interest in Eos, or I'd be happy to let Tom or Phil to take the lead
too...
Comments?
mike
At 09:15 AM 3/12/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Tom Crowley wrote:
Phil et al,
I suggest either BAMS or Eos - the latter would probably be better because it is
shorter, quicker, has a wide distribution, and all the points that need to be made have
been made before.
rather than dwelling on Soon and Baliunas I think the message should be pointedly made
against all of the standard claptrap being dredged up.
I suggest two figures- one on time series and another showing the spatial array of
temperatures at one point in the Middle Ages. I produced a few of those for the Ambio
paper but already have one ready for the Greenland settlement period xxx xxxx xxxxshowing the
regional nature of the warmth in that figure. we could add a few new sites to it, but
if people think otherwise we could of course go in some other direction.
rather than getting into the delicate question of which paleo reconstruction to use I
suggest that we show a time series that is an eof of the different reconstructions - one
that emphasizes the commonality of the message.
Tom
Dear All,
I agree with all the points being made and the multi-authored article would be a
good idea,
but how do we go about not letting it get buried somewhere. Can we not address the
misconceptions by finally coming up with definitive dates for the LIA and MWP and
redefining what we think the terms really mean? With all of us and more on the paper,
it should
carry a lot of weight. In a way we will be setting the agenda for what should be being
done
over the next few years.
We do want a reputable journal but is The Holocene the right vehicle. It is
probably the
best of its class of journals out there. Mike and I were asked to write an article for
the EGS
journal of Surveys of Geophysics. You've not heard of this - few have, so we declined.
However,
it got me thinking that we could try for Reviews of Geophysics. Need to contact the
editorial
board to see if this might be possible. Just a thought, but it certainly has a high
profile.
What we want to write is NOT the scholarly review a la Jean Grove (bless her soul)
that
just reviews but doesn't come to anything firm. We want a critical review that enables
agendas to be set. Ray's recent multi-authored piece goes a lot of the way so we need
to build on this.
Cheers
Phil
At 12:55 11/03/xxx xxxx xxxx, Michael E. Mann wrote:
HI Malcolm,
Thanks for the feedback--I largely concur. I do, though, think there is a particular
problem with "Climate Research". This is where my colleague Pat Michaels now publishes
exclusively, and his two closest colleagues are on the editorial board and review editor
board. So I promise you, we'll see more of this there, and I personally think there *is*
a bigger problem with the "messenger" in this case...
But the Soon and Baliunas paper is its own, separate issue too. I too like Tom's latter
idea, of a more hefty multi-authored piece in an appropriate journal (Paleoceanography?
Holocene?) that seeks to correct a number of misconceptions out there, perhaps using
Baliunas and Soon as a case study ('poster child'?), but taking on a slightly greater
territory too.
Question is, who would take the lead role. I *know* we're all very busy,
mike
At 10:28 AM 3/11/xxx xxxx xxxx, Malcolm Hughes wrote:
I'm with Tom on this. In a way it comes back to a rant of mine
to which some of you have already been victim. The general
point is that there are two arms of climatology:
neoclimatology - what you do based on instrumental records
and direct, systematic observations in networks - all set in a
very Late Holocene/Anthropocene time with hourly to decadal
interests.
paleoclimatology - stuff from rocks, etc., where major changes
in the Earth system, including its climate, associated with
major changes in boundary conditions, may be detected by
examination of one or a handful of paleo records.
Between these two is what we do - "mesoclimatology" -
dealing with many of the same phenomena as neoclimatology,
using documentary and natural archives to look at phenomena
on interannual to millennial time scales. Given relatively small
changes in boundary conditions (until the last couple of
centuries), mesoclimatology has to work in a way that is very
similar to neoclimatology. Most notably, it depends on heavily
replicated networks of precisely dated records capable of
being either calibrated, or whose relationship to climate may
be modeled accuarately and precisely.
Because this distinction is not recognized by many (e.g.
Sonnechkin, Broecker, Karlen) we see an accumulation of
misguided attempts at describing the climate of recent
millennia. It would be better to head this off in general, rather
than draw attention to a bad paper. After all, as Tom rightly
says, we could all nominate really bad papers that have been
published in journals of outstanding reputation (although there
could well be differences between our lists).
End of rant, Cheers, Malcolm
> Hi guys,
>
> junk gets published in lots of places. I think that what could be
> done is a short reply to the authors in Climate Research OR a SLIGHTLY
> longer note in a reputable journal entitled something like "Continuing
> Misconceptions About interpretation of past climate change." I kind
> of like the more pointed character of the latter and submitting it as
> a short note with a group authorship carries a heft that a reply to a
> paper, in no matter what journal, does not.
>
> Tom
>
>
>
> > Dear All,
> > Apologies for sending this again. I was expecting a stack of
> >emails this morning in
> > response, but I inadvertently left Mike off (mistake in pasting)
> >and picked up Tom's old
> > address. Tom is busy though with another offspring !
> > I looked briefly at the paper last night and it is appalling -
> >worst word I can think of today
> > without the mood pepper appearing on the email ! I'll have time to
> >read more at the weekend
> > as I'm coming to the US for the DoE CCPP meeting at Charleston.
> >Added Ed, Peck and Keith A.
> > onto this list as well. I would like to have time to rise to the
> >bait, but I have so much else on at
> > the moment. As a few of us will be at the EGS/AGU meet in Nice, we
> >should consider what
> > to do there.
> > The phrasing of the questions at the start of the paper
> >determine the answer they get. They
> > have no idea what multiproxy averaging does. By their logic, I
> >could argue 1998 wasn't the
> > warmest year globally, because it wasn't the warmest everywhere.
> >With their LIA being 1300-
> >1900 and their MWP xxx xxxx xxxx, there appears (at my quick first
> >reading) no discussion of
> > synchroneity of the cool/warm periods. Even with the instrumental
> >record, the early and late
> > 20th century warming periods are only significant locally at
> >between 10-20% of grid boxes.
> > Writing this I am becoming more convinced we should do
> >something - even if this is just
> > to state once and for all what we mean by the LIA and MWP. I think
> >the skeptics will use
> > this paper to their own ends and it will set paleo back a number of
> >
> >years if it goes
> > unchallenged.
> >
> > I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having
> >nothing more to do with it until they
> > rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A CRU person is on the
> >editorial board, but papers
> > get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch.
> >
> > Cheers
> > Phil
> >
> > Dear all,
> > Tim Osborn has just come across this. Best to ignore
> >probably, so don't let it spoil your
> > day. I've not looked at it yet. It results from this journal
> >having a number of editors. The
> > responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let
> >
> >a few papers through by
> > Michaels and Gray in the past. I've had words with Hans von Storch
> >
> >about this, but got nowhere.
> > Another thing to discuss in Nice !
> >
> > Cheers
> > Phil
> >
> >>X-Sender: f055@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
> >>X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1
> >>Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 14:32:14 +0000
> >>To: p.jones@uea
> >>From: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
> >>Subject: Soon & Baliunas
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>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
> >
> >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
> >---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >-------
> >
> >
> >Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:Soon & Baliunas 2003.pdf (PDF
> >/CARO) (00016021)
>
>
> --
> 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
Malcolm Hughes
Professor of Dendrochronology
Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
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
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
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
______________________________________________________________
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.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
[5]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.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
5. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1062783293.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Something for the weekend !
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2003 13:34:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
sorry phil, one more relevant item. I've cc'd in Keith on this, since you had mentioned
that you had discussed the issue w/ him.
This is from Dave Meko's (quite nice!) statistics lecture notes:
[1]http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/~dmeko/notes_8.pdf
See page 2, section 8.1.
He provides two (in reality, as I mentioned before, there are really 3!) basic boundary
constraints on a smooth (ie, in "filtering"). The first method he refers to is what I
called the "minimum norm" constraint (assuming the long-term mean beyond the boundary).
The second, which he calls "reflecting the data across the endpoints", is the constraint I
have been employing which, again, is mathematically equivalent to insuring a point of
inflection at the boundary. This is the preferable constraint for non-stationary mean
processes, and we are, I assert, on very solid ground (preferable ground in fact) in
employing this boundary constraint for series with trends...
mike
At 05:20 PM 9/5/2003 +0100, Phil Jones wrote:
Mike,
Attached some more plots.
1. Figure 7 - Forcing. Guess this is it. Could cut the y scale to -6 and say in
caption that
1258 or 1259 is the only event to go beyond this, then give value in caption. Scale
will then widen out. OK to do ? Caspar's solar now there.
2. Fig 2a - first go at coverage. This is % coverage over 1xxx xxxx xxxxfrom HadCRUT2v.
3. Fig 4 again. Moved legends and reduced scale. Talked to Keith and we both think
that
the linear trend padding will get criticised. Did you use this in GRL and or Fig 5 for
RoG
with Scott. If so we need to explain it.
On this plot all the series are in different units, so normalised over 1xxx xxxx xxxx(or
equiv for
decades) then smoothed. Again here I can reduce scale further and Law Dome can go
out of the plot. Thoughts ? Think all should be same scale.
Have got GKSS model runs for Fig 8. Were you happy Hans' conditions. If so I'll send
onto
Scott.
Next week I only have Fig 2b to do. This will be annual plot of NH, Europe and CET,
smoothed in some way.
For the SOI I and Tim reckon that it won't work showing this at interannual
timescale with
3 plots. It will then not be like the NAO plot.
Thoughts on colours as well.
Have a good weekend. Logging off once this has gone.
Cheers
Phil
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
______________________________________________________________
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
[2]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
References
1. http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/~dmeko/notes_8.pdf
2. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1062784268.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Something for the weekend !
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2003 13:51:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
sorry, meant "is just the minimum slope" constraint, in first sentence...
apologies for the multiple emails,
mike
At 01:47 PM 9/5/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Actually,
I think Dave's suggestion "reflecting the data across the endpoints" is really just the
"minimum norm" constraint, which insures zero slope near the boundary. In other words,
he's probably only talking about reflecting about the time axis. I assert that a
preferable alternative, when there is a trend in the series extending through the
boundary is to reflect both about the time axis and the amplitude axis (where the
reflection is with respect to the y value of the final data point). This insures a point
of inflection to the smooth at the boundary, and is essentially what the method I'm
employing does (I simply reflect the trend but not the variability about the trend--they
are almost the same)...
mike
At 01:34 PM 9/5/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Michael E. Mann wrote:
sorry phil, one more relevant item. I've cc'd in Keith on this, since you had mentioned
that you had discussed the issue w/ him.
This is from Dave Meko's (quite nice!) statistics lecture notes:
[1]http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/~dmeko/notes_8.pdf
See page 2, section 8.1.
He provides two (in reality, as I mentioned before, there are really 3!) basic boundary
constraints on a smooth (ie, in "filtering"). The first method he refers to is what I
called the "minimum norm" constraint (assuming the long-term mean beyond the
boundary). The second, which he calls "reflecting the data across the endpoints", is
the constraint I have been employing which, again, is mathematically equivalent to
insuring a point of inflection at the boundary. This is the preferable constraint for
non-stationary mean processes, and we are, I assert, on very solid ground (preferable
ground in fact) in employing this boundary constraint for series with trends...
mike
At 05:20 PM 9/5/2003 +0100, Phil Jones wrote:
Mike,
Attached some more plots.
1. Figure 7 - Forcing. Guess this is it. Could cut the y scale to -6 and say in
caption that
1258 or 1259 is the only event to go beyond this, then give value in caption. Scale
will then widen out. OK to do ? Caspar's solar now there.
2. Fig 2a - first go at coverage. This is % coverage over 1xxx xxxx xxxxfrom HadCRUT2v.
3. Fig 4 again. Moved legends and reduced scale. Talked to Keith and we both think
that
the linear trend padding will get criticised. Did you use this in GRL and or Fig 5 for
RoG
with Scott. If so we need to explain it.
On this plot all the series are in different units, so normalised over 1xxx xxxx xxxx(or
equiv for
decades) then smoothed. Again here I can reduce scale further and Law Dome can go
out of the plot. Thoughts ? Think all should be same scale.
Have got GKSS model runs for Fig 8. Were you happy Hans' conditions. If so I'll send
onto
Scott.
Next week I only have Fig 2b to do. This will be annual plot of NH, Europe and CET,
smoothed in some way.
For the SOI I and Tim reckon that it won't work showing this at interannual
timescale with
3 plots. It will then not be like the NAO plot.
Thoughts on colours as well.
Have a good weekend. Logging off once this has gone.
Cheers
Phil
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
______________________________________________________________
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
[2]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
[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.shtml
References
1. http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/~dmeko/notes_8.pdf
2. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
3. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
4. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1063657189.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,simon.tett@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, peter.thorne@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,chris.folland@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, david.parker@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: rural/urban paper
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2003 16:19:49 +0100
<x-flowed>
Dear All,
Link below is to a paper just out in the US. Could be some press
coverage - as it says
there is no difference between urban and rural stations for temperature
over the US !
Interesting to see if the skeptics pick up on this. They are probably
still going through the
Vinnikov/Grody paper in Science showing MSU2 warming more than the
surface, so
they have a lot to look at.
I reviewed Peterson's one with Chris and couldn't see anything wrong
with the main message.
Cheers
Phil
>Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2003 10:23:xxx xxxx xxxx
>From: "Thomas C Peterson" <Thomas.C.Peterson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
>Organization: NOAA/NESDIS/NCDC
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U)
>X-Accept-Language: en
>To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
>Subject: rural/urban paper
>
>Hi, Phil.
>
>I was going to send you a copy of my rural/urban paper, but I didn't get
>a .pdf before it was published. As it is 6 megs, I'll just give you the
>link instead:
>
>http://ams.allenpress.com/pdfserv/i1xxx xxxx xxxx41.pdf
>
>Regards,
>
> Tom
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
</x-flowed>
Original Filename: 1064946297.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: Irina Fast <f14@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: COLD season T reconstruction
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 14:24:57 +0200
Reply-to: f14@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Hi Tim, hi Keith,
attached you can find my reconstruction of the cold season temperature
anomalies. I have retained the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th EOFs for the whole time
span (1xxx xxxx xxxx). It seems to be a rather strange choice, but if I retain the
1st and/or 2nd EOFs the reconstructed T anomalies for Northern Europe are too
large in comparison to observed anomalies.
You will see that calibration/verification skills are miserable. But it puts
my mind to rest, if you say, that this is an expected result.
Last week you wrote :
>Please let us (me and Keith) know if you are happy with your implementation
>of the Mann et al. method. I remember that you had some strange results
>when you applied it to the model simulations - did you solve those
>problems? We might be able to help or provide advice if you still have
>problems with the method.
The problems I mentioned at the meeting in France arose if I applied my
implementation of the method to the INSTRUMENTAL data and I tried to explain
this effect through the gaps in the data. In the meantime I was able to
eliminate to some degree this problem through the use of other fortran
compiler and numeric library. I will prepare an slide with assesment of the
performance of the current method implementation for "perfect proxy data"
(i.e. instrumental data as proxy data).
And now some words to agenda
1) Antje Weisheimer will say initial greeting words and make all
organisational announcments.
2) As you know, Ulrich take part in the analysis of the simulations performed
with ECHO-G by GKSS group. I am not sure, but maybe he will also present his
ideas for further (in framework of SO&P reasonable) simulations, that can be
conducted by FUB.
For the presentations both OHP and data projector are available.
Best redards
Irina
--
________________________________________________________
Irina Fast
Freie Universit
Original Filename: 1065125462.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "Robert Matthews" <r.matthews@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re:
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2003 16:11:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, ckfolland@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, peter.stott@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, d.viner@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Dear Mr. Matthews,
Unfortunately Phil Jones is travelling and will probably be unable to offer a separate
reply. Since your comments involve work that is his as well, I have therefore taken the
liberty of copying your inquiry and this reply to several of his British colleagues.
The comparisons made in our paper are well explained therein, and your statements belie
the clearly-stated qualifications in our conclusions with regard to separate analyses of
the Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, and globe.
An objective reading of our manuscript would readily reveal that the comments you refer to
are scurrilous. These comments have not been made by scientists in the peer-reviewed
literature, but rather, on a website that, according to published accounts, is run by
individuals sponsored by ExxonMobile corportation, hardly an objective source of
information.
Owing to pressures on my time, I will not be able to respond to any further inquiries from
you. Given your extremely poor past record of reporting on climate change issues, however,
I will leave you with some final words. Professional journalists I am used to dealing with
do not rely upon un-peer-reviewed claims off internet sites for their sources of
information. They rely instead on peer-reviewed scientific research, and mainstream, rather
than fringe, scientific opinion.
Sincerely,
Michael E. Mann
At 08:30 PM 10/2/2003 +0100, Robert Matthews wrote:
Dear Professor Mann
I'm putting together a piece on global warming, and I'll be making reference to your
paper in Geophysical Research Letters
with Prof Jones on "Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia".
When the paper came out, some critics argued that the paper actually showed that there
have been three periods in the last 2000 years which were warmer than today (one just
prior to AD 700, one just after, and one just prior to AD 1000). They also claimed that
the paper could only conclude that current temperatures were warmer if one compared the
proxy data with other data sets. (For an example of these arguments, see:
[1]http://www.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n34c4.htm)
I'd be very interested to include your rebuttals to these arguments in the piece I'm
doing. I must admit to being confused by why proxy data should be compared to
instrumental data for the last part of the data-set. Shouldn't the comparison be a
consistent one throughout ?
With many thanks for your patience with this
Robert Matthews
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Matthews
Science Correspondent, The Sunday Telegraph
C/o: 47 Victoria Road, Oxford, OX2 7QF
Email: [2]r.matthews@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Homepage: [3]www.ncrg.aston.ac.uk/People/
Tel: (+44)(0)1xxx xxxx xxxx/ Mob: 0xxx 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
[4]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
References
1. http://www.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n34c4.htm
2. mailto:r.matthews@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
3. http://www.ncrg.aston.ac.uk/People/
4. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1065128595.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, ckfolland@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, peter.stott@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, d.viner@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re:
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2003 17:03:xxx xxxx xxxx
For those of you who haven't seen it, this is Robert Matthews last article on the topic.
Hence the fairly brusque tone taken...
mike
Middle Ages were warmer than today, say scientists
By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 06/04/2003)
Claims that man-made pollution is causing "unprecedented"
global warming
have been seriously undermined by new research which shows that the
Earth
was warmer during the Middle Ages.
From the outset of the global warming debate in the late 1980s,
environmentalists have said that temperatures are rising higher and
faster
than ever before, leading some scientists to conclude that greenhouse
gases
from cars and power stations are causing these
"record-breaking" global
temperatures.
Last year, scientists working for the UK Climate Impacts Programme said
that
global temperatures were "the hottest since records began"
and added: "We
are pretty sure that climate change due to human activity is here and
it's
accelerating."
This announcement followed research published in 1998, when scientists
at
the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia declared
that
the 1990s had been hotter than any other period for 1,000 years.
Such claims have now been sharply contradicted by the most
comprehensive
study yet of global temperature over the past 1,000 years. A review of
more
than 240 scientific studies has shown that today's temperatures
are neither
the warmest over the past millennium, nor are they producing the most
extreme weather - in stark contrast to the claims of the
environmentalists.
The review, carried out by a team from Harvard University, examined the
findings of studies of so-called "temperature proxies" such as
tree rings,
ice cores and historical accounts which allow scientists to estimate
temperatures prevailing at sites around the world.
The findings prove that the world experienced a Medieval Warm Period
between
the ninth and 14th centuries with global temperatures significantly
higher
even than today.
They also confirm claims that a Little Ice Age set in around 1300,
during
which the world cooled dramatically. Since 1900, the world has begun to
warm
up again - but has still to reach the balmy temperatures of the Middle
Ages.
The timing of the end of the Little Ice Age is especially significant, as
it
implies that the records used by climate scientists date from a time
when
the Earth was relatively cold, thereby exaggerating the significance of
today's temperature rise.
According to the researchers, the evidence confirms suspicions that
today's
"unprecedented" temperatures are simply the result of
examining temperature
change over too short a period of time.
The study, about to be published in the journal Energy and Environment,
has
been welcomed by sceptics of global warming, who say it puts the claims
of
environmentalists in proper context. Until now, suggestions that the
Middle
Ages were as warm as the 21st century had been largely anecdotal and
were
often challenged by believers in man-made global warming.
Dr Philip Stott, the professor emeritus of bio-geography at the
University
of London, told The Telegraph: "What has been forgotten in all the
discussion about global warming is a proper sense of history."
According to Prof Stott, the evidence also undermines doom-laden
predictions
about the effect of higher global temperatures. "During the Medieval
Warm
Period, the world was warmer even than today, and history shows
that it was
a wonderful period of plenty for everyone."
In contrast, said Prof Stott, severe famines and economic collapse
followed
the onset of the Little Ice Age around 1300. He said: "When the
temperature
started to drop, harvests failed and England's vine industry died. It
makes
one wonder why there is so much fear of warmth."
The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
the
official voice of global warming research, has conceded the possibility
that
today's "record-breaking" temperatures may be at least
partly caused by the
Earth recovering from a relatively cold period in recent history. While
the
evidence for entirely natural changes in the Earth's temperature
continues
to grow, its causes still remain mysterious.
Dr Simon Brown, the climate extremes research manager at the
Meteorological
Office at Bracknell, said that the present consensus among scientists on
the
IPCC was that the Medieval Warm Period could not be used to judge the
significance of existing warming.
Dr Brown said: "The conclusion that 20th century warming is not
unusual
relies on the assertion that the Medieval Warm Period was a global
phenomenon. This is not the conclusion of IPCC."
He added that there were also doubts about the reliability of
temperature
proxies such as tree rings: "They are not able to capture the recent
warming
of the last 50 years," he said.
Original Filename: 1065189366.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>, "Robert Matthews" <r.matthews@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Mann and Jones, climate of the last two millennia
Date: Fri Oct 3 09:56:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, ckfolland@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, peter.stott@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, d.viner@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Dear Mr. Matthews,
I have not read the criticism on the website you refer to, but will add to Mike Mann's
response in a small, but hopefully helpful, way.
Comparison of the Mann and Jones proxy-based reconstruction with instrumental temperature
data *is* a valid comparison to make, provided that the reconstruction is *calibrated* to
represent the instrumental record and provided that the *uncertainties* in the calibration
are taken into account when making the comparison.
That is, after all, the purpose of calibration - to allow two different data sets to be
compared!
As is clear from their article, Mann and Jones do undertake a careful calibration and only
make comparisons after the calibration, and their comparison figure includes their
estimated uncertainty range. Thus the conclusions they draw (regarding whether recent
warming is unprecedented) are valid and are supported by their analysis.
This does not mean that future work, perhaps using new proxy records or different methods
for calibration or for estimating calibration uncertainties, will not change those
conclusions. But it remains true that their conclusions are supported by their analysis.
As an example of a poor comparison, see the piece by Fred Pearce on page 5 of 12 July 2003
issue of New Scientist. This is a short news article about the Mann and Jones paper, and
it unfortunately shows a comparison figure without the associated calibration
uncertainties. That is not a good comparison. I mention this in case you were thinking of
including a diagram in your article, perhaps showing the Mann and Jones results. If you
do, then it will only be valid for comparing the recent instrumental temperatures with the
proxy-based reconstruction of earlier temperatures if the reconstruction uncertainties are
included. Try to avoid the mistake that Fred Pearce made.
Regards
Tim
At 21:11 02/10/2003, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Dear Mr. Matthews,
Unfortunately Phil Jones is travelling and will probably be unable to offer a separate
reply. Since your comments involve work that is his as well, I have therefore taken the
liberty of copying your inquiry and this reply to several of his British colleagues.
The comparisons made in our paper are well explained therein, and your statements belie
the clearly-stated qualifications in our conclusions with regard to separate analyses of
the Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, and globe.
An objective reading of our manuscript would readily reveal that the comments you refer
to are scurrilous. These comments have not been made by scientists in the peer-reviewed
literature, but rather, on a website that, according to published accounts, is run by
individuals sponsored by ExxonMobile corportation, hardly an objective source of
information.
Owing to pressures on my time, I will not be able to respond to any further inquiries
from you. Given your extremely poor past record of reporting on climate change issues,
however, I will leave you with some final words. Professional journalists I am used to
dealing with do not rely upon un-peer-reviewed claims off internet sites for their
sources of information. They rely instead on peer-reviewed scientific research, and
mainstream, rather than fringe, scientific opinion.
Sincerely,
Michael E. Mann
At 08:30 PM 10/2/2003 +0100, Robert Matthews wrote:
Dear Professor Mann
I'm putting together a piece on global warming, and I'll be making reference to your
paper in Geophysical Research Letters
with Prof Jones on "Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia".
When the paper came out, some critics argued that the paper actually showed that there
have been three periods in the last 2000 years which were warmer than today (one just
prior to AD 700, one just after, and one just prior to AD 1000). They also claimed that
the paper could only conclude that current temperatures were warmer if one compared the
proxy data with other data sets. (For an example of these arguments, see:
[1]http://www.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n34c4.htm)
I'd be very interested to include your rebuttals to these arguments in the piece I'm
doing. I must admit to being confused by why proxy data should be compared to
instrumental data for the last part of the data-set. Shouldn't the comparison be a
consistent one throughout ?
With many thanks for your patience with this
Robert Matthews
References
1. http://www.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n34c4.htm
Original Filename: 1065206624.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>
Subject: Re: Mann and Jones, climate of the last two millennia
Date: Fri Oct 3 14:43:xxx xxxx xxxx
Hi Mike,
I agree completely with your analysis. I don't get so many requests as you, but even so
get enough to mean that I ignore most - I just pick a few at random to respond to. As Phil
is away, I picked this. He's already come back with a second request, which I answered,
but that's all he'll get from me. I'll
At 13:56 03/10/2003, you wrote:
Tim,
Many kind thanks for going out of your way to respond to this. Colleagues have
increasingly been warning me against "taking the bait" too often (which this seems
another attempt at), and so I resisted giving the detailed response that you have nicely
provided (as well as I could have myself, I might add). They dried to bog Ben Santer
down with distractions, they've been trying to do the same to me, and its supposed to be
a warning to the rest of us. So the trick is to find the middle ground between
responding to most egregious and potentially damaging accusations, and not swinging at
every ball they throw your way. Its thus very helpful if friends and colleagues can take
up a bit of the slack now and then, as you have so graciously done...
This guy has written such trash before on the subject, that I assume he's out to do a
hatchet job and there is little that we can do to change that. But your response was
very helpful. It will be interesting to see what comes of this,
thanks once again,
mike
p.s. I never saw the graph in Fred Pearce's piece, since the online version didn't show
it. But it does sound problematic from what you describe.
At 9:56 AM 10/3/2003 +0100, Tim Osborn wrote:
Dear Mr. Matthews,
I have not read the criticism on the website you refer to, but will add to Mike Mann's
response in a small, but hopefully helpful, way.
Comparison of the Mann and Jones proxy-based reconstruction with instrumental
temperature data *is* a valid comparison to make, provided that the reconstruction is
*calibrated* to represent the instrumental record and provided that the *uncertainties*
in the calibration are taken into account when making the comparison.
That is, after all, the purpose of calibration - to allow two different data sets to be
compared!
As is clear from their article, Mann and Jones do undertake a careful calibration and
only make comparisons after the calibration, and their comparison figure includes their
estimated uncertainty range. Thus the conclusions they draw (regarding whether recent
warming is unprecedented) are valid and are supported by their analysis.
This does not mean that future work, perhaps using new proxy records or different
methods for calibration or for estimating calibration uncertainties, will not change
those conclusions. But it remains true that their conclusions are supported by their
analysis.
As an example of a poor comparison, see the piece by Fred Pearce on page 5 of 12 July
2003 issue of New Scientist. This is a short news article about the Mann and Jones
paper, and it unfortunately shows a comparison figure without the associated calibration
uncertainties. That is not a good comparison. I mention this in case you were thinking
of including a diagram in your article, perhaps showing the Mann and Jones results. If
you do, then it will only be valid for comparing the recent instrumental temperatures
with the proxy-based reconstruction of earlier temperatures if the reconstruction
uncertainties are included. Try to avoid the mistake that Fred Pearce made.
Regards
Tim
At 21:11 02/10/2003, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Dear Mr. Matthews,
Unfortunately Phil Jones is travelling and will probably be unable to offer a separate
reply. Since your comments involve work that is his as well, I have therefore taken the
liberty of copying your inquiry and this reply to several of his British colleagues.
The comparisons made in our paper are well explained therein, and your statements belie
the clearly-stated qualifications in our conclusions with regard to separate analyses of
the Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, and globe.
An objective reading of our manuscript would readily reveal that the comments you refer
to are scurrilous. These comments have not been made by scientists in the peer-reviewed
literature, but rather, on a website that, according to published accounts, is run by
individuals sponsored by ExxonMobile corportation, hardly an objective source of
information.
Owing to pressures on my time, I will not be able to respond to any further inquiries
from you. Given your extremely poor past record of reporting on climate change issues,
however, I will leave you with some final words. Professional journalists I am used to
dealing with do not rely upon un-peer-reviewed claims off internet sites for their
sources of information. They rely instead on peer-reviewed scientific research, and
mainstream, rather than fringe, scientific opinion.
Sincerely,
Michael E. Mann
At 08:30 PM 10/2/2003 +0100, Robert Matthews wrote:
Dear Professor Mann
I'm putting together a piece on global warming, and I'll be making reference to your
paper in Geophysical Research Letters
with Prof Jones on "Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia".
When the paper came out, some critics argued that the paper actually showed that there
have been three periods in the last 2000 years which were warmer than today (one just
prior to AD 700, one just after, and one just prior to AD 1000). They also claimed that
the paper could only conclude that current temperatures were warmer if one compared the
proxy data with other data sets. (For an example of these arguments, see:
<http://www.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n34c4.htm>http://www.co2science.org/journal/20
03/v6n34c4.htm)
I'd be very interested to include your rebuttals to these arguments in the piece I'm
doing. I must admit to being confused by why proxy data should be compared to
instrumental data for the last part of the data-set. Shouldn't the comparison be a
consistent one throughout ?
With many thanks for your patience with this
Robert Matthews
Dr Timothy J Osborn
Climatic Research Unit
School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
e-mail: t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
web: [1]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/
sunclock: [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.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
Original Filename: 1065636937.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Fwd: EOS: Soon et al reply
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2003 14:15:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Caspar Ammann <ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, Scott Rutherford <srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Thanks Tom,
In fact, I'm almost done with a brief (<750 word) response that addresses all of these
issues, and I'll be looking forward to comments on this. Hope to send it out later today,
mike
At 12:05 PM 10/8/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Tom Wigley wrote:
Folks,
I agree with Kevin that any response should be brief.
On the second page of their comment, SBL quote some of the caveat statements in their
earlier papers. The irony is that they do not heed their own caveats. If taken
literally, all these proxy data problems would mean that one can draw no conclusions
about the existence or otherwise of the MWE or LIA as global phenomena. This is what we
say (I hope -- at least I have said this in the paper cited belowxxx xxxx xxxxbut our over-bold
skeptics say that these anomalous intervals *did* exist. You can't have it both ways --
and basically what BS are doing is a confidence trick.
What is still needed here is an analysis of the BS method to show that it could be used
to prove anything they wanted.
I am still concerned about 'our' dependence on treerings. Are our results really
dependent on one region pre 1400 as SNL state? Is the problem of nonclimate obfuscating
factors in the 20th century enough to screw up calibrations on moderate to long
timescales? If not, we need to state and document this clearly. Does this problem apply
to both widths and densities? Are the borehole data largely garbage? I recall a paper of
Mike's on this issue that I refereed last year -- and there was something in GRL (I
think) very recently pointing out some serious potential problems.
Finally, did we really say what SBL claim we did in their p. 1 point (2)? Surely the
primary motive for all of this paleo work is that it DOES have a bearing on
human-induced climate effects?
Tom.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++==
Michael E. Mann wrote:
Thanks Kevin,
I agree w/ your take on this. We need to come up with a short, but powerful rebuttal.
According to Judy Jacobs, we're only allowed 750 words, so we will need to be even more
sparing and precise in our words that in the original Eos piece. By the way, we have 3
weeks to submit (i.e., our response is due October 27).
We need to focus on the key new claims, while simply dismissing, by reference to earlier
writings, the recycled ones. The Kalnay et al paper seems to be the new darling of the
contrarians, and you're precise wording on this will be very helpful. Phil, Tim and
others should be able to put to rest, in one or two sentences, the myths about urban
heat bias on the CRU record. A few words from Malcolm and Keith on the biological tree
growth effects would help too. The comments on the various paleo figures are confusing
and inconsistent, but from what I can tell, just plain wrong. I'll draft some words on
that.
I'll just continue to assimilate info and suggestions from everyone over the next week
or so, and then try to put this in the form a rough draft rebuttal to send out.
Thanks for your quick reply. Looking forward to hearing back from others,
mike
At 09:16 AM 10/6/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Kevin Trenberth wrote:
Hi Mike et al
Firstly, you should know that comments by myself and the group at NCDC (Vose et al) on
the Kalnay and Cai Nature paper were accepted (after a rebuttal and review process), and
then fine tuned. But it is a slow process and Kalnay and Cai have yet to finalize their
rebuttal. I am attaching FYI the "final" version of my comment. NCDC deals with the
problems with the records.
My reaction to the reply is as follows:
The first page deals with comments on proxy records and their problems. I think we
should agree that there are issues with proxy records, they are not the same as
instrumental records (which have their own problems), but they are all we have.
However, some are better than others (e.g. borehole) and annual or better resolution is
highly desirable in particular to make sure that anomalies are synchronous. The records
are not really the issue here, it is there use (and abuse).
There are several charges about only US or Northern Europe that can be quickly dealt
with. However the main points are on p 2.
We know from the observational record that global or hemispheric means are typically
small residuals of large anomalies of opposite signs so that large warm spots occur
simultaneously with large cold regions (witness last winter).
This fact means that we need high temporal resolution (annual or better) AND an ability
to compute hemispheric averages based on a network. The Soon and Baliunas approach
fails dismally on both of these critical points.
BS point out that Fig 2 of Mann and Jones show some temperatures as high as those in the
20th C. (They are wrong, do they mean Fig 2 of
M03?) You can counter that by looking at China where this is far from true.
I would be inclined to respond with a fairly short minimalist but powerful rebuttal,
focussing mostly on the shortcomings of BS and not defending the M03 and other records.
It should point out (again) that their methodolgy is fundamentally flawed and their
conclusions are demonstrably wrong. For this, the shorter the better.
Regards
Kevin
Michael E. Mann wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
Sorry to have to bother you all with this-- I know how busy our schedules are, and this
comes at an unfortunately busy time for many of us I would guss. But I think we *do*
have to respond, and I'm hoping that the response can be, again, something we all sign
our names to.
I've asked Ellen for further guidance on the length limits of our response, and the due
date for our response. The criticisms are remarkably weak, and easy to reply to in my
view. S&B have thus unwittingly, in my view, provided us with a further opportunity to
expose the most egregious of the myths perpetuated by the contrarians (S&B have managed
to cram them all in there) in the format of a response to their comment.
THeir comment includes a statement about how the article is all based on Mann et al
[1999] which is pretty silly given what is stated in the article, and what is shown in
Figure 1. It would be appropriate to begin our response by pointing out this obvious
straw man.
Then there is some nonsense about the satellite record and urban heat islands that Phil,
Kevin, and Tom W might in particular want to speak to. And Malcolm and Keith might like
to speak to the comments on the supposed problems due to non-biological tree growth
effects (which even if they were correctly described, which they aren't, have little
relevance to several of the reconstructions shown, and all of the model simulation
results shown). There is one paragraph about Mann and Jones [2003] which is right from
the Idsos' "Co2 science" website, and Phil and I and Tim Osborn and others have already
spoken too. I will draft a short comment on that.
I'd like to solicit individual comments, sentences or paragraphs, etc. from each of you
on the various points raised, and begin to assimilate this into a "response". I'll let
you know as soon as I learn from Ellen how much space we have to work with.
Sorry for the annoyance. I look forward to any contributions you can each provide
towards a collective response.
Thanks,
mike
Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2003 08:23:xxx xxxx xxxx
To: Caspar Ammann <ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> <[1]mailto:ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
<[2]mailto:rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
<[3]mailto:k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Crowley, "Malcolm Hughes" <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
<[4]mailto:mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
<[5]mailto:omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
<[6]mailto:t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Jonathan Overpeck <jto@u.arizona.edu>
<[7]mailto:jto@u.arizona.edu>, Scott Rutherford <srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
<[8]mailto:srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
<[9]mailto:trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
<[10]mailto:wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> <[11]mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Fwd: EOS: Soon et al reply
Comments?
Mike
Delivered-To: mem6u@xxxxxxxxx.xxx <[12]mailto:mem6u@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Date: Sat, 04 Oct 2003 12:33:xxx xxxx xxxx
From: Ellen Mosley-Thompson <thompson.4@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> <[13]mailto:thompson.4@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: EOS: Soon et al reply
X-Sender: ethompso@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
<[14]mailto:ethompso@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> <[15]mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Cc: lzirkel@xxxxxxxxx.xxx <[16]mailto:lzirkel@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, jjacobs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
<[17]mailto:jjacobs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.22
Dear Dr. Mann (and co-authors of the Forum piece that appeared in EOS),
Dr. Willie Soon and his co-authors have submitted a reply to your Forum piece that I
have accepted. Let me outline below the official AGU procedure for replies so that you
know the options available. I have sent these same instructions to Dr. Soon.
As you wrote the original piece you now have the opportunity to see their comment
(attached) on your Forum piece. You may decide whether or not to send a reply. If you
choose not to reply - their reply will be published alone.
Should you decide to reply then your response will be published along with their comment
on your paper. One little twist is that if you submit a reply, they are allowed to see
the reply, but they can't comment on it. They have two options: they can let both
their and your comments go forward and be published together or (after viewing your
reply) they also have the option of withdrawing their comment. In the latter case, then
neither their comment or your reply to the comment will be published. Yes this is a
little contorted, but these are the instructions that I received from Judy Jacobs at
AGU.
I have attached the pdf of their comment. Please let me know within the next week
whether you and your colleagues plan to prepare a reply. If so, then you would have
several weeks to do this.
I have copied Lee Zirkel and Judy Jacobs of AGU as this paper is out of the ordinary and
I want to be sure that I am handling all this correctly.
I look forward to hearing from you regarding your decision on a reply.
Best regards,
Ellen Mosley-Thompson
EOS, Editor
cc: Judy Jacobs and Lee Zirkel
attachment
______________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx <[18]mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx > Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX:
(4xxx xxxx xxxx
[19]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 <[20]mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx > Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX:
(4xxx xxxx xxxx
[21]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
-- ****************
Kevin E. Trenberth e-mail: trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
<[22]mailto:trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Climate Analysis Section, NCAR [23]www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/
<[24]http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/>
P. O. Box 3000, (3xxx xxxx xxxx
Boulder, CO 80xxx xxxx xxxx (3xxx xxxx xxxx(fax)
Street address: 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80303
______________________________________________________________
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
[25]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
[26]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
References
1. mailto:ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
2. mailto:rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
3. mailto:k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
4. mailto:mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
5. mailto:omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
6. mailto:t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
7. mailto:jto@u.arizona.edu
8. mailto:srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
9. mailto:trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
10. mailto:wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
11. mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
12. mailto:mem6u@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
13. mailto:thompson.4@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
14. mailto:ethompso@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
15. mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
16. mailto:lzirkel@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
17. mailto:jjacobs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
18. mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
19. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
20. mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
21. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
22. mailto:trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
23. http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/
24. http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/
25. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
26. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1065723391.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Tom Crowley <tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: draft
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 14:16:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Caspar Ammann <ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, Scott Rutherford <srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
HI Tom,
My understanding of the papers from the borehole community ever since the 1997 GRL article
by Huang et al is that they no longer believe that the data has proper sensitivity to
variations prior to about AD 1500--in fact, I don't believe anyone in that community now
feels they can meaningfully go farther back that that. Huang contributed the section on
boreholes in chapter 2 for IPCC (2001), and wrote the very words to that effect...
Now, the possible influences on boreholes might lead to inferred trends in GST that are
different from those in SAT is a different one. A number of independent recently published
papers by (Beltrami et al; Stiglitz et al; Mann and Schmidt) and others have demonstrated
that there should be expectations for significant differences between past SAT (what we
care about) and GST variations (what boreholes in the best case scenario see) due to
snowcover influences, etc. We don't have time to discuss that in this very short piece, so
I tried, as briefly as possible, to cover our bases on this issue, in a way that doesn't
really stir up the pot w/ the borehole folks...
I'm interested in any further thoughts on the above,
mike
At 12:38 PM 10/9/xxx xxxx xxxx, Tom Crowley wrote:
Hi, I don't understand why we cannot cite the borehole data for the MWP - that in a
sense is the only legitimate data set that shows a ~1 C cooling from the MWP to the LIA
- forget the deforestation problem for the moment, that is later in time -
if the borehole data for the MWP are legitimate then there is still a case for
concluding that the MWP was significantly warmer than the LIA
tom
Thanks Phil,
a few brief responses and inquiries below...
cheers,
mike
At 04:17 PM 10/9/03 +0100, Phil Jones wrote:
Mike,
Away Oct 11-16, so here are a few comments. A few times the tone could be a little
less
antagonistic. We don't want to inflame things any further. So remove the word laundry.
fair enough. You *should* have seen the first draft I wrote. This is quite toned down
now...
1. With the boreholes do we want to get one of the borehole group to sign up, eg Henry
Pollack?
Would add a lot of weight to the last 500 year argument.
this has merit. unfortunately though I think it might open up a hornets nest of the
author list is not identical to the original list of authors on the Eos article. Other
thoughts on this...
2. On the UHI, there was a paper in a very recent issue of J. Climate by Tom Peterson,
arguing
for the USA that this is non-existent. Issue with UHI is one of large versus local
scale. One
station doesn't influence large-scale averages. All studies which look at the UHI
comprehensively
find very little effect (an order of magnitude smaller than the warming). Also the
warming
in the 20th century is very similar between the NH and SH and between the land and
ocean
components.
let me see if I can fit one or two sentences in on this and keep the article under the
length.
Also, if we can't estimate temperature histories accurately, then SB can't say it
was
warmer in their MWP period. They believe the 20th century instrumental data when they
want to.
yes, one of a large number of amazing contradictions in their reasoning...
3. Keith is away till next week. I doubt we will have the space to do the 'tree issues'
justice.
Best just to say that there are an (equal) number of non tree-based proxy series??
I do think we need to address their spurious description of the putative biological
effects. Any way that you can get in touch w/ Keith for a response, perhaps just to
this one point? Also, Malcolm might want to comment on the current wording?
4. Ray, Malcolm and Henry Diaz have a Science Perspectives piece coming out in the next
couple of weeks on the MWP/E. This is also relevant.
good!
5. Don't think we will get away with the last paragraph. Whether we want it is an issue
??
Shouldn't we be sticking to the science.
ok, I wasn't sure myself--yet it is a powerful rebuke, and reminds people that the
objection to the validity of their work goes beyond just our article--and that's
important. Does someone want to try to rephrase this paragraph, maybe reducing it to a
couple sentences?
Cheers
Phil
At 21:37 08/10/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Dear co-authors,
Attached is a draft response, incorporating suggestions Kevin, Tom W, and Michael. I've
aimed to be as brief as possible, but hard to go much lower than 750 words and still
address all the key issues. 750 words, by the way, is our allotted limit.
Looking forward to any comments. Feel free to send an edited version if you prefer, and
I'll try to assimilate all of the suggested edits and suggestions into a single revised
draft. If you can get comments to me within the next couple days, that would be very
helpful as we're working on a late October deadline for the final version.
Thanks for your continued help,
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
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________________________________
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
[2]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
--
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
_______________________________________________________________________
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.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
2. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
3. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
4. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1065785323.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: Edward Cook <drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Jan Esper <esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: data again
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 07:28:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
<x-flowed>
Jan,
Did you finally get the raw ring-width data from Malcolm? Does Keith
know about this? He asked Malcolm for the data as well, but did not
receive a reply as far as I know.
Ed
>Dear Malcom
>
>thank you for the series of mails and attachements! I just came back
>into office (and I am already close to leave for another fieldtrip
>next week), and had no time yet to look in all the files you sent
>me. As soon as I get an overview of what you sent, I will keep you
>informed.
>
>About the Central Asian data, I am just putting another draft
>together also describing some of the new data Kerstin Treydte (who
>is now in our team) sampled. Kerstin herself started working on a
>bigger analysis including her new ring width and stable isotope data
>(she processed 1000-yr. records of carbon and oxygen stable
>isotopes). This will be the major paper of her PhD, and once this
>paper is accepted, we are intending to release data to the ITRDB.
>Will keep you posted.
>
>Thank you again and take care
>Jan
>
>
>
>
>
>>Dear Jan - did you get the e-mail I sent on September 22? It may have caused
>>problems, because there were 10 attachemnts. In fact, I include
>>some that were
>>missed with this message. In addition, you should be able to get
>>the *.rwl files
>>for the 27 western chronologies usedin Mann, Bradley, Hughes 1998 at the
>>following web location:
>>http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/~fenbiao/For_Jan_27rwl/
>>Please let me know if you experience any problems with this.
>>I also omitted some of the attachments from the earlier message. THey should
>>be attached to this one. Good luck! Malcolm
>>
>>------- Forwarded message follows -------
>>From: Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
>>To: esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
>>Subject: data
>>Copies to: fenbiao@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
>>Date sent: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 17:30:xxx xxxx xxxx
>>
>>Dear Jan - I have recently started to clear up all outstanding
>>business related to the next analysis by Mike Mann, Ray Bradley, et
>>al., and found, to my horror, that I had not replied to your e-mail of
>>last April 8 (copy at end of this message). In response to our
>>request for access to the data on which your 2000 and 2002 papers were
>>based, you indicated that you would need to check with a colleague at
>>WSL. Have you been able to do this, and if so, what is the result?
>>Obviously we are keen to include all important data already in the
>>peer reviewed literature, such as yours, in our analyses. You also
>>requested "the raw measurements of (y)our sequoia data and the western
>>conifer data used in the Mann et al 1998, 1999 papers". 1) data used
>>in Mann et al 1998 - these are all listed in the Nature on-line
>>supplementary materials (attached), and were all from the ITRDB, so
>>they may be downloaded from there. The same list is also attached. We
>>think we can find theraw data (the *.rwl files) and send them to you
>>if you would like - please let me know. 2) The western conifer data
>>used in MBH 99 are a subset of these, as indicated in another set of
>>attached MS-Excel files. These are a little bit repetitive, but
>>contain the following particularly useful information for these 27
>>longer chronologies: vchron11000 contains, inter alia, the ITRDB ID,
>>species code, first year, last year, collector's name
>>
>>vchron41000 contains the ITRDB ID, then the first and last
>>years with 5, 10, etc samples
>>
>>vchron81000 contains the ID, etc and then in the following
>>cols: V mn sensitivity W chronology autocorrelation, AE
>>number of series, AG mean correlation of series with
>>chronology AH mean series autocorrelation, AI series mean
>>length, series median segment length.
>>Please remember that this set ranges from lower forest
>>border to upper forest border, so that various mixtures from
>>all precip to precip plus temp locally apply.
>>
>>As I recently told Keith Briffa, you should be aware that it
>>would be completely unjustified to assume that the first
>>measured ring was anywhere near the pith in many of these
>>sites, especially as you go back in time, where the
>>chronologies are based on remnants that have weathered on
>>the inside and the outside. For this, and related, reasons, it
>>would also be completely unjustified to assume any
>>constant, or small, distance in years of the first measured
>>rings from pith. That is, I can see no way of making a
>>remotely reliable estimate of cambial age in the vast
>>majority of these samples. I am sitting on the
>>bones of a manuscript in which I had someone spend
>>several months checking many hundreds of bristlecone and
>>similar cross-sections and cores in our store. They found
>>only a few dozen - less than 10%, where either pith was
>>present, or the innermost ring could reasonably be described
>>as 'near pith'. If you have seen these stripbark montane 5-
>>needle pines, and ever tried to core them, you will
>>understand why. A further problem arises from the
>>observation that radial increment may increase rather
>>dramatically in the period after most of the bark dies back,
>>but of course we don't know when that was. Andy Bunn at
>>Montana State University has, I think, a manuscript in
>>preparation of review on this. I have a manuscript in
>>preparation where we restandardized many of these series
>>in the following way -
>>identify the long, flat part of the sample ringwidth curve
>>(i.e. remove the 'grand period of growth', if present) and
>>then fit a straight line of no or negative slope.
>>3) I attach *rwl and chronology files from three sequoia sites (those
>>referred to by Hughes and Brown, 1992 Drought frequency in central
>>California since 101 B.C. recorded in giant sequoia tree rings.
>>Climate Dynamics, 6, xxx xxxx xxxx) Please note the reasons given for the
>>rather strong standardization used (explained in text) and for the
>>splitting of the Mountain Home samples at AD 1297 (this explains my
>>sending you 4 of each kind of file, even though there were only three
>>sites in this case). We do not have pith dates for these samples, but
>>it is important to note the following caution - most of the radials
>>and cross- sections were from stumps, where we found that very slow
>>growth near the pith was often an indicator of great age. This of
>>course tells us that trees destined to be very old were often
>>suppressed for many years in their early life (but not all of them).
>>The tricky part comes from the observation that, although we could see
>>slow growth on the top of the stump near the pith, the wood was often
>>in too poor a state of presevation there to date and measure.
>>Therefore, do not assume that the first ring measured was anywhere
>>near pith - it could easily be off by centuries. There is a *.crn and
>>*.rwl for each of the four chronologies. Gfo is Giant Forest, CSX is
>>Camp Six, and MH is Mountain Home, split into MH1 and MH 2 as
>>indicated above. I'd be interested to know how you get on with this.
>>Cheers, Malcolm . .
>> ----- Forwarded message from Jan Esper <esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> -----
>>> Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 16:15:35 +0200
>>> From: Jan Esper <esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
>>> Reply-To: Jan Esper <esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
>>> Subject: Re: from Malcolm Hughes
>>> To: fenbiao@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
>>>
>>> Dear Fenbiao and Malcom
>>>
>>> Since I got funding from the Swiss Science Foundation to do some
>>> similar research, I really like the idea to share our tree ring
>>> data. However, I have to discuss this again with Kerstin Treydte who
>>> now started to work at the WSL and is running a re-analysis
>>> (including new samplings) for western central Asia.
>>>
>>> In principle, would it be possible to receive the raw measurements
>>> of your Sequoia data and the western conifer data used in the Mann
>>> et al. 1998, 1999 papers?
>>>
>>> What do you think?
>>>
>>> Take care
>>> Jan
>>>
>>> CC
>>> K Treydte
>>> D Frank
>>>
>>> >Dear Jan,
>>> >You may be familiar with our earlier attempts at very large scale
>>> multi-proxy
>>> >reconstruction of certain aspects of climate, (for example, Mann,
>>> >Bradley
>>> and
>>> >Hughes, 1998, Nature, 392, xxx xxxx xxxx). This work was possible because
>>> >many colleagues made their data available. We are now assembling an
>>> >updated and extended dataset for new work along similar lines. We
>>> >hope to take advantage of data that were not available five years
>>> >ago, and to use improved methods in our analyses.
>>> >
>>> >Would you be willing to permit us to use the
>>> >(chronologies/reconstruction?) reported in your paper (s) listed
>> > >below?
>>> >
>>> >Esper J. (2000). Long-term tree-ring variations in Juniperus at the
>>> >upper timber-line in karakorum (Pakistan). Holocene 10 (2),
>>> >xxx xxxx xxxx.
>>> >
>>> >Esper J., Schweingruber F.H., Winiger M. (2002). 1300 years of
>>> >climatic history for western central Asia inferred from tree-rings.
>>> >Holocene 12 (3),
>>> xxx xxxx xxxx.
>>> >
>>> >We are particularly interested in (1) the ring-width series of
>>> >Juniperus excelsa M. Bieb and Juniperus turkestanica Kom. From 6
>>> >different sites in
>>> the
>>> >Hunza-karakorrum;
>>> >xxx xxxx xxxxindividual sites ranging from the lower to upper local
>>> >timber-lines
>>> in
>>> >the Northwest karakorum of Pakistan and the Southern Tien Shan of
>>> Kirghizia.
>>> >
>>> >If at all possible, we would prefer to receive tree-ring data as
>>> >both raw
>>> data
>>> >(individual unmodified measurement series for all samples used) and
>>> >your
>>> final
>>> >chronologies used in the publication.
>>> >
>>> >If you are willing to share your data for the purposes of our
>>> >analyses, but
>>> do
>>> >not
>>> >wish them to be passed on to anyone else by us, please tell us, and
>>> >we will mark the data accordingly in our database. If data have
>>> >been marked as not being publicly available, we will pass on any
>>> >requests for them to you.
>>> >
>>> >Please reply to Dr. Fenbiao Ni
Original Filename: 1066073000.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>
Subject: Re: draft
Date: Mon Oct 13 15:23:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Caspar Ammann <ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, Scott Rutherford <srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
At 20:02 09/10/2003, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Dear All,
I like all of Kevin's changes. Please work with his version as a template for any
additional suggested changes. I'll incorporate the additional comments received from
Phil and Tom W and others afterwards...
thanks,
mike
Dear Mike and co-authors,
I've now had a chance to go through the drafts and comments etc. Working from Kevin's
version, here are some suggestions to consider:
(1) Are you sure that what we saw is the final version of S03, after any EOS editing,
etc.? Wouldn't want any of the S03 quotes used here to get changed if they had to edit to
reduce the length of their piece!
(2) Suggested re-ordering of the end of point (1): 'it holds in some cases for tree-ring
density measurements at higher latitudes, but rarely for annual ring widths.'
(3) Suggested re-wording near start of point (2): '"clearly shows temperatures in the MWP
that are as high as those in the 20th century" is misleading because it is true for only
the early 20th century. The hemispheric warmth of the late 20th century is anomalous in a
long-term context.' (with underlining of either 'late' or 'is' for emphasis). Of course,
this suggestion needs to be checked carefully (e.g., is it only the 'early' 20th century
that is exceeded by some earlier temperatures?). But it is an important change because it
is not actually 'false' or 'untrue' if some part of the 20th century was exceeded earlier -
they don't specify which part, so their statement is (probably deliberately) vague rather
than wrong. The above suggestion simply points this out.
(4) Related to this comment, is the question of whether the actual reconstruction (not
instrumental observations) in the late 20th century exceeds all reconstructed values
(central estimates) prior to the 20th century. My copy of Mann and Jones (2003) has poor
quality figures, so this is hard for me to tell. It appears that it might be true, but
only right at the end - i.e. the 1980 value of the filtered series. If it is really only
at the end, and a 40-year smoothing filter is used, then I would be concerned about this
statement appearing in the response if it depends upon applying the filter right up to the
end of the record. Doing so requires some assumption about values past the end of the
series. This in itself is problematic, but especially so if the assumption were that the
trend was extrapolated to produce values for input to the filter. Of course, if the
straight 40-year mean from 1xxx xxxx xxxxof the reconstruction exceeds all other 40-year means
of the reconstruction, then I'd be happy with the statement.
(5) I don't like point (3) on the boreholes. It relies on the "optimal" borehole series of
Mann et al. (2003), a result that I have some concerns about and which is being used here
to imply less uncertainty than really exists over this issue. In the EOS paper we included
this and the "non-optimal" gridded borehole series, so we were leaving open some
uncertainty. I'm not saying that I prefer/believe the Huang et al. series either, since I
agree that extracting the temperature signal from the borehole data is very difficult. I
just don't like to imply it has been solved when it hasn't.
(6) Can we provide a supporting reference for the statement in point (4) about land use
changes leading to an overall cooling?
(7) I like the final paragraph as it is, possibly dropping the last "We feel it is time to
move on" line.
Cheers
Tim
Original Filename: 1066075033.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: minor explosion
Date: Mon Oct 13 15:57:xxx xxxx xxxx
X-Sender: esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 15:21:03 +0200
To: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
From: Jan Esper <esper@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: minor explosion
Cc: Wilson Rob <rjwilson_dendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Hi Keith
thank you for the message and the comments to the Siberia draft. We are intending to
finalize a draft when Rob is coming over and we go on a sampling trip to the Bavarian
Forest and E-Germany. We will then also discuss of data-overlap issue again and might
include some extra figure with our record re-calculated (without Tornetraesk and Polar
Ural).
However, I (Jan) an not sure that we should have another figure with only the Mann and
the (reduced) Esper series. Second, it seems that Mann used the density records from
these two sites only (not ring width). Lets see.
We would really like to send you the final draft, and ask you to become the fourth
author? We ask this not only because of the "minor explosion" that might happen, but
also because some of the arguments in the draft were made earlier by you anyway. What do
you think?
Take care
Jan and Dave
CC
R Wilson
Jan
with respect to the overlap problem we could agree to differ for now -I think the
problem is much more in the earlier period anyway but I suggest you go ahead and submit
it anyway. There are some minor wording points but nothing that affects the meaning. You
know that in my opinion the recent similarity in the records is driven by instrumental
data inclusion (or calibration against instrumental data) and that Mann's earlier data
are strongly biased towards summer and northern land signals. I think you will start a
minor explosion - but that is what science needs .
I looked at your tree-line data and thought them very interesting. In my opinion the way
you directed the interpretation was what drew your criticisms . For a climate journal
you should have been pointing out the complicated regional responses (to the temperature
record) rather than trying to state a simple overall response. The data are clearly
important and you should have no trouble publishing them if you rethink the approach to
the description (no work needed). I think Boreas or Arctic and Alpine Res. are better
targets though. I enjoyed the discussions also and it is frustrating not to be able to
get up to speed with your other projects. I will get back to you when I have looked more
at the idea of the big review paper.
the very best to you and all
Keith
At 09:55 AM 10/8/03 +0200, Jan Esper wrote:
Hi Keith
with respect to our EOS draft, I am still thinking about the data overlap argument you
made.
1. I still believe that the overlap is not that significant, and that the significance
is changing dramatically with time (less in more recent centuries).
2. With respect to the aim of the paper, we do NOT intend to explain the similarity
between the records. We rather address that the recons differ in the lower frequency
domains AND are much more similar in the higher frequency domains. I believe that this
is crucial. (One could also say that we only address the dissimilarity, and the
arguments related to that.)
I appreciated the discussions we had very, very much (especially the one in the night
before the official meeting).
Take care
Jan
CC
D Frank
R Wilson
--
Dr. Jan Esper
Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL
Zuercherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf
Switzerland
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
Email: esper@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/
--
Dr. Jan Esper
Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL
Zuercherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf
Switzerland
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
Email: esper@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
[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/
Original Filename: 1066077412.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: draft
Date: Mon Oct 13 16:36:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Caspar Ammann <ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, Scott Rutherford <srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Mike and all
Hi , just back from a trip and only now catching up with important emails. Given
the restricted time and space available to furnish a response to SB comments ,
I offer the following mix of comment and specific wording changes:
I agree that the S+B response is designed to deflect criticism by confusing the issues
rather than answering our points.
In fact they fail to address any of the 3 specific
issues we raised Namely , 1. the need for critical evaluation of proxy inputs , 2. the
need for a consistent assimilation of widespread (dated and well resolved ) records,
3. the essential requirement for objective/quantitative calibration (scaling) of the input
records to allow for assessment of the uncertainties when making
comparisons of different reconstructions and when comparing early with recent
temperatures.
Their own , ill-conceived and largely subjective approach did not take
account of the uncertainties and problems in the use of palaeodata that they chose to
highlight in their opening remarks.
I would be in favour of stating something to this effect at the outset of our response.
Also , as regards the tree-ring bit , I fully concur with the sense of your text as
regards Section 1, but suggest the following wording (to replace ",rarely for annual
ring widths, and almost entirely at higher latitudes.")
"but in certain high-latitude regions only. Where this is the case , these relatively
recent
(ie post 1950) data are not used in calibrating temperature reconstructions. In many other
(even high-latitude) areas density or ring-width records display no bias."
In the spirit of healthy debate - I agree with Tim's remarks , warning against presenting a
too
sanguine impression that the borehole debate is closed ( though I do think it is closing!).
I also believe , as you already know, that the use of a recent padding algorithm to extend
smoothed data to the present time, is inappropriate if it assumes the continuation of a
recent
trend. This is likely to confuse , rather than inform, the wider public about the current
climate state .
Finally , I repeat my earlier remarks (made before EOS piece published) that we are missing
an opportunity to say that a warm Medieval period per se is not a refutation of
anthropogenic
warming , {as its absence is no proof}, if we do not understand the role of specific
forcings (natural
and anthropogenic) that influenced medieval and current climates.
Cheers
Keith
At 12:48 PM 10/9/xxx xxxx xxxx, Kevin Trenberth wrote:
Hi all
Here are my suggested changes: toned down in several places. Tracking turned on
Kevin
Michael E. Mann wrote:
Dear co-authors,
Attached is a draft response, incorporating suggestions Kevin, Tom W, and Michael. I've
aimed to be as brief as possible, but hard to go much lower than 750 words and still
address all the key issues. 750 words, by the way, is our allotted limit.
Looking forward to any comments. Feel free to send an edited version if you prefer, and
I'll try to assimilate all of the suggested edits and suggestions into a single revised
draft. If you can get comments to me within the next couple days, that would be very
helpful as we're working on a late October deadline for the final version.
Thanks for your continued help,
mike
______________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: [1]mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[2]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
--
****************
Kevin E. Trenberth e-mail: [3]trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Climate Analysis Section, NCAR [4]www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/
P. O. Box 3000, (3xxx xxxx xxxx
Boulder, CO 80xxx xxxx xxxx (3xxx xxxx xxxx(fax)
Street address: 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80303
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: xxx xxxx xxxx
Fax: xxx xxxx xxxx
[5]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[6]/
References
1. mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx%A0
2. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
3. mailto:trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
4. http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/
5. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
6. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
Original Filename: 1066149334.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Caspar Ammann <ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: draft
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 12:35:xxx xxxx xxxx
Cc: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, Scott Rutherford <srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
thanks Caspar,
I agree--its important to emphasize this point, and I'm glad you recognized that we were
underplaying it...
mike
At 10:25 AM 10/14/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Caspar Ammann wrote:
Mike,
looks good to me. It is one of these points where they can persuade journalists that
they are 'correct' and it actually got into newspapers and finally to the senate floor
this way. The more we are able to explain why the first half of the 20th century warmed
up naturally, the more confidence we get on the detection of the anthropogenic signal
afterwards.
Caspar
Michael E. Mann wrote:
Dear All,
In response to Caspar's suggestion, which I agree with, I propose rephrasing item "2"
as follows:
2) The statement by S03 that the Mann and Jones [2003] reconstruction "clearly shows
temperatures in the MWP that are as high as those in the 20th century" is misleading if
not false. M03 emphasize that it is the late, and not the early or mid 20th century
warmth, that is outside the range of past variability. Mann and Jones emphasize
conclusions for the Northern Hemisphere, noting that those for the Southern Hemisphere
(and globe) are indeterminate due to a paucity of southern hemisphere data. Consistent
with M03, they conclude that, late 20th century Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures
are anomalous in a long-term (nearly two millennium) context.
Any comments?
Thanks,
mike
Delivered-To: [1]mem6u@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 09:18:xxx xxxx xxxx
From: Caspar Ammann [2]<ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Organization: NCAR
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624
Netscape/7.1 (ax)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
To: "Michael E. Mann" [3]<mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: draft
Hi Mike,
it now looks good to me indeed including the new last paragraph following Tom's wording.
The only point I would highlight a little more is in point 2): Maybe it could be stated
that the early part of the 20th century is within the natural range whereas the late
20th century, the main point of the AGU position statement and also in M03, is clearly
outside. Please also add a second 'n' in my name...
Cheers, and thanks for your momentum on this,
Caspar
Michael E. Mann wrote:
Dear All,
I agree with each of Tom W's suggestions. Adopting them, by the way, brings us down to
738 words.
So pending any revised language from Keith/Malcolm in response to Michael O's comment on
paragraph 2, I'm putting out a last call for comments, sign-ons, etc...
Thanks,
mike
At 08:00 AM 10/14/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Tom Wigley wrote:
Some minor points ....
para. xxx xxxx xxxxshould it be 'an' ensuing rather than 'the' ensuing?
para. xxx xxxx xxxxI still think 'each' (line 3) is unnecessary
para. xxx xxxx xxxxno comma after '(and globe)'
re boreholes, does the point about comparing late 20th century with a 'much longer
period' 1000 years ago help us? Given that the 1000 years ago data is highly lowpass
filtered, if one *did* have a series with a temporal resolution that allowed a
legitimate comparison, then the likelihood of a warmer interval 1000 years ago must be
higher.
In any event, the time scale issue will not be meaningful to most readers. The key point
is the data reliability/uncertainty. I would just say something like ...
".... taken into account. For times more than 500 years ago, uncertainties in the
borehole reconstructions preclude any useful quantitative comparison."
Finally, I would like the last para. retained, but I suggest shorter wording as ...
".... as indicating that SB03 misinterpreted and misrepresented the paleoclimatological
literature. The controversy ....".
My problem here is twofold. First, they really say nothing directly about 'mainstream
scientific opinion' (except that they clearly disagree with it). At issue is not the
mainstream opinion, but their interpretation of the literature and their illogical
conclusions. Second, they may have misrepresented the results of their work, but we do
not address this issue so it comes here as a non sequitur. In fact, just what such
'misrepresentation' consists of, and why it might be judged as 'misrepresentation' is a
subtle issue. Hence my revision -- which retains the word 'misrepresentation', but in a
different context.
Tom.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++==
Michael E. Mann wrote:
Thanks Tim and Malcolm,
The latest round of suggestions were extremely helpful. I've accepted them w/ a few
minor tweaks (attached). We're at 765 words--I think AGU will let us get away w/ that...
So, comments from others?
Thanks,
mike
At 02:11 PM 10/14/2003 +0100, Tim Osborn wrote:
SO3 argue that borehole data provide a conflicting view of past temperature histories.
To the contrary, the borehole estimates for recent centuries shown in M03 may be
consistent with other estimates, provided consideration is given to statistical
uncertainties, spatial sampling and possible influences on the ground surface [e.g.,
snow cover changes--Beltrami and Kellman, 2003]. It is not meaningful to compare the
late 20th century with a much longer period 1000 years ago [Bradley et al., 2003],
especially given the acknowledged limitations [Pollack et al., 1998] of borehole data.
______________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: [4]mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[5]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: [6]mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[7]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
--
Caspar M. Ammann
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Climate and Global Dynamics Division - Paleoclimatology
Advanced Study Program
1850 Table Mesa Drive
Boulder, CO 80xxx xxxx xxxx
email:
[8]ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
tel: xxx xxxx xxxxfax: xxx xxxx xxxx
______________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: [9]mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Phone: (4xxx xxxx xxxxFAX: (4xxx xxxx xxxx
[10]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
--
Caspar M. Ammann
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Climate and Global Dynamics Division - Paleoclimatology
Advanced Study Program
1850 Table Mesa Drive
Boulder, CO 80xxx xxxx xxxx
email:
[11]ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
tel: xxx xxxx xxxxfax: 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
[12]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
References
1. mailto:mem6u@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
2. mailto:ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
3. mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
4. mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
5. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
6. mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
7. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
8. mailto:ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
9. mailto:mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
10. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
11. mailto:ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
12. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1066166844.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, ckfolland@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, tkarl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: Re: smoothing
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 17:27:xxx xxxx xxxx
Sorry--one more error. The MSE values for "minimum norm" and "minimum roughness" are
switched in the figure legend. Obviously the former is a better fit...
mike
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 17:08:xxx xxxx xxxx
To: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Keith Briffa
<k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, ckfolland@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
tkarl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: smoothing
Bcc: Scott Rutherford <srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
correction '1)' should read:
'1) minimum norm: sets padded values equal to mean of available data beyond the
available data (often the default constraint in smoothing routines)'
sorry for the confusion,
mike
At 05:05 PM 10/14/2xxx xxxx xxxx, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Dear All,
To those I thought might be interested, I've provided an example for discussion of
smoothing conventions. Its based on a simple matlab script which I've written (and
attached) that uses any one of 3 possible boundary constraints [minimum norm, minimum
slope, and minimum roughness] on the 'late' end of a time series (it uses the default
'minimum norm' constraint on the 'early' end of the series). Warming: you needs some
matlab toolboxes for this to run...
The routines uses a simple butterworth lowpass filter, and applies the 3 lowest order
constraints in the following way:
1) minimum norm: sets mean equal to zero beyond the available data (often the default
constraint in smoothing routines)
2) minimum slope: reflects the data in x (but not y) after the last available data
point. This tends to impose a local minimum or maximum at the edge of the data.
3) minimum roughness: reflects the data in both x and y (the latter w.r.t. to the y
value of the last available data point) after the last available data point. This tends
to impose a point of inflection at the edge of the data---this is most likely to
preserve a trend late in the series and is mathematically similar, though not identical,
to the more ad hoc approach of padding the series with a continuation of the trend over
the past 1/2 filter width.
The routine returns the mean square error of the smooth with respect to the raw data. It
is reasonable to argue that the minimum mse solution is the preferable one. In the
particular example I have chosen (attached), a 40 year lowpass filtering of the CRU NH
annual mean series 1xxx xxxx xxxx, the preference is indicated for the "minimum roughness"
solution as indicated in the plot (though the minimum slope solution is a close 2nd)...
By the way, you may notice that the smooth is effected beyond a single filter width of
the boundary. That's because of spectral leakage, which is unavoidable (though minimized
by e.g. multiple-taper methods).
I'm hoping this provides some food for thought/discussion, esp. for purposes of IPCC...
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 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
[2]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
[3]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
References
1. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
2. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
3. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1066337021.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Malcolm Hughes <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Caspar Ammann <ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jto@u.arizona.edu, Scott Rutherford <srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Fwd: Correspondence on Harvard Crimson coverage of Soon / Baliunas views on climate
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:43:xxx xxxx xxxx
Dear All,
Thought you would be interested in this exchange, which John Holdren of Harvard has been
kind enough to pass along...
mike
Delivered-To: mem6u@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
X-Sender: jholdren@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0.2
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:53:xxx xxxx xxxx
To: "Michael Mann" <mem6u@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "Tom Wigley" <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
From: "John P. Holdren" <john_holdren@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Correspondence on Harvard Crimson coverage of Soon / Baliunas
views on climate
Michael and Tom --
I'm forwarding for your entertainment an exchange that followed from my being quoted in
the Harvard Crimson to the effect that you and your colleagues are right and my
"Harvard" colleagues Soon and Baliunas are wrong about what the evidence shows
concerning surface temperatures over the past millennium. The cover note to faculty
and postdocs in a regular Wednesday breakfast discussion group on environmental science
and public policy in Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences is more or
less self-explanatory.
Best regards,
John
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 11:02:xxx xxxx xxxx
To: schrag@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, oconnell@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, holland@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
pearson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, eli@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, ingalls@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
mlm@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, avan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, moyer@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
poussart@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jshaman@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, sivan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
bec@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, saleska@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
From: "John P. Holdren" <john_holdren@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: For the EPS Wednesday breakfast group: Correspondence on Harvard Crimson
coverage of Soon / Baliunas views on climate
Cc: jeremy_bloxham@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, william_clark@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
patricia_mclaughlin@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
Bcc:
Colleagues--
I append here an e-mail correspondence I have engaged in over the past few days trying
to educate a Soon/Baliunas supporter who originally wrote to me asking how I could think
that Soon and Baliunas are wrong and Mann et al. are right (a view attributed to me,
correctly, in the Harvard Crimson). This individual apparently runs a web site on which
he had been touting the Soon/Baliunas position.
While it is sometimes a mistake to get into these exchanges (because one's interlocutor
turns out to be ineducable and/or just looking for a quote to reproduce out of context
in an attempt to embarrass you), there was something about this guy's formulations that
made me think, at each round, that it might be worth responding. In the end, a couple
of colleagues with whom I have shared this exchange already have suggested that its
content would be of interest to others, and so I am sending it to our "environmental
science and policy breakfast" list for your entertainment and, possibly, future
breakfast discussion.
The items in the correspondence are arranged below in chronological order, so that it
can be read straight through, top to bottom.
Best,
John
At 09:43 PM 9/12/2xxx xxxx xxxx, you wrote:
Dr. Holdren:
In a recent Crimson story on the work of Soon and Baliunas, who have written for my
website [1]www.techcentralstation.com, you are quoted as saying:
My impression is that the critics are right. It s unfortunate that so much attention is
paid to a flawed analysis, but that s what happens when something happens to support the
political climate in Washington.
Do you feel the same way about the work of Mann et. al.? If not why not?
Best,
Nick
Nick Schulz
Editor
TCS
xxx xxxx xxxx
From: John P. Holdren [[2]mailto:john_holdren@xxxxxxxxx.xxx]
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 11:06 AM
To: Nick Schulz
Subject: Harvard Crimson coverage of Soon / Baliunas controversy
Dear Nick Schultz --
I am sorry for the long delay in this response to your note of September 12. I have
been swamped with other commitments.
As you no doubt have anticipated, I do not put Mann et al. in the same category with
Soon and Baliunas.
If you seriously want to know "Why not?", here are three ways one might arrive at what I
regard as the right conclusion:
(1) For those with the background and patience to penetrate the scientific arguments,
the conclusion that Mann et al. are right and Soon and Baliunas are wrong follows from
reading carefully the relevant Soon / Baliunas paper and the Mann et al. response to it:
W. Soon and S. Baliunas, "Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000
years", Climate Research, vol. 23, pp 89ff, 2003.
M. Mann, C. Amman, R. Bradley, K. Briffa, P. Jones, T. Osborn, T. Crowley, M. Hughes, M.
Oppenheimer, J. Overpeck, S. Rutherford, K. Trenberth, and T. Wigley, "On past
temperatures and anomalous late-20th century warmth", EOS, vol 84, no. 27, pp 256ff, 8
July 2003.
This is the approach I took. Soon and Baliunas are demolished in this comparison.
(2) Those lacking the background and/or patience to penetrate the two papers, and
seriously wanting to know who is more likely to be right, have the option of asking
somebody who does possess these characteristics -- preferably somebody outside the
handful of ideologically committed and/or oil-industry-linked professional
climate-change skeptics -- to evaluate the controversy for them. Better yet, one could
poll a number of such people. They can easily be found by checking the web pages of
earth sciences, atmospheric sciences, and environmental sciences departments at any
number of major universities.
(3) The least satisfactory approach, for those not qualified for (1) and lacking the
time or initiative for (2), would be to learn what one can about the qualifications
(including publications records) and reputations, in the field in question, of the
authors on the two sides. Doing this would reveal that Soon and Baliunas are,
essentially, amateurs in the interpretation of historical and paleoclimatological
records of climate change, while the Mann et al. authors include several of the most
published and most distinguished people in the world in this field. Such an
investigation would also reveal that Dr. Baliunas' reputation in this field suffered
considerable damage a few years back, when she put her name on an incompetent critique
of mainstream climate science that was never published anywhere respectable but was
circulated by the tens of thousands, in a format mimicking that of a reprint from the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in pursuit of signatures on a petition
claiming that the mainstream findings were wrong.
Of course, the third approach is the least satisfactory because it can be dangerous to
assume that the more distinguished people are always right. Occasionally, it turns out
that the opposite is true. That is one of several good reasons that it pays to try to
penetrate the arguments, if one can, or to poll others who have tried to do so. But in
cases where one is not able or willing to do either of these things -- and where one is
able to discover that the imbalance of experience and reputation on the two sides of the
issue is as lopsided as here -- one ought at least to recognize that the odds strongly
favor the proposition that the more experienced and reputable people are right. If one
were a policy maker, to bet the public welfare on the long odds of the opposite being
true would be foolhardy.
Sincerely,
John Holdren
PS: I have provided this response to your query as a personal communication, not as
fodder for selective excerpting on your web site or elsewhere. If you do decide that
you would like to propagate my views on this matter more widely, I ask that you convey
my response in its entirety.
At 11:16 AM 10/13/2xxx xxxx xxxx, you wrote:
I have the patience but, by your definition certainly, not the background, so I suppose
it s not surprising I came to a different conclusion. I guess my problem concerns what
lawyers call the burden of proof. The burden weighs heavily much more heavily, given
the claims on Mann et.al. than it does on Soon/Baliunas. Would you agree?
Falsifiability for the claims of Mann et. al. requires but a few examples, does it
not? Soon/Baliunas make claims that have no such burden. Isn t that correct?
Best,
Nick
From: John P. Holdren [[3]mailto:john_holdren@xxxxxxxxx.xxx]
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 5:54 PM
To: Nick Schulz
Subject: RE: Harvard Crimson coverage of Soon / Baliunas controversy
Nick--
Yes, I can see how it might seem that, in principle, those who are arguing for a strong
and sweeping proposition (such as that "the current period is the warmest in the last
1000 years") must meet a heavy burden of proof, and that, because even one convincing
counter-example shoots the proposition down, the burden that must be borne by the
critics is somehow lighter. But, in practice, burden of proof is an evolving thing --
it evolves as the amount of evidence relevant to a particular proposition grows.
To choose an extreme example, consider the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
Both of these are "empirical" laws. Our confidence in them is based entirely on
observation; neither one can be "proven" from more fundamental laws. Both are very
sweeping. The first law says that energy is conserved in all physical processes. The
second law says that entropy increases in all physical processes. So, is the burden of
proof heavier on somebody who asserts that these laws are correct, or on somebody who
claims to have found an exception to one or both of them? Clearly, in this case, the
burden is heavier on somebody who asserts an exception. This is in part because the
two laws have survived every such challenge in the past. No exception to either has
ever been documented. Every alleged exception has turned out to be traceable to a
mistake of some kind. This burden on those claiming to have found an exception is so
strong that the US Patent Office takes the position, which has been upheld in court,
that any patent application for an invention that violates either law can be rejected
summarily, without any further analysis of the details.
Of course, I am not asserting that the claim we are now in the warmest period in a
millennium is in the same league with the laws of thermodynamics. I used the latter
only to illustrate the key point that where the burden is heaviest depends on the state
of prior evidence and analysis on the point in question -- not simply on whether a
proposition is sweeping or narrow.
In the case actually at hand, Mann et al. are careful in the nature of their claim.
They write along the lines of "A number of reconstructions of large-scale temperature
changes support the conclusion" that the current period is the warmest in the last
millennium. And they write that the claims of Baliunas et al. are "inconsistent with
the preponderance of scientific evidence". They are not saying that no shred of
evidence to the contrary has ever been produced, but rather that analysis of the
available evidence as a whole tends to support their conclusion.
This is often the case in science. That is, there are often "outlier" data points or
apparent contradictions that are not yet adequately explained, but still are not given
much weight by most of the scientists working on a particular issue if a strong
preponderance of evidence points the other way. This is because the scientists judge it
to be more probable that the outlier data point or apparent contradiction will
ultimately turn out to be explainable as a mistake, or otherwise explainable in a way
that is consistent with the preponderance of evidence, than that it will turn out that
the preponderance of evidence is wrong or is being misinterpreted. Indeed, apparent
contradictions with a preponderance of evidence are FAR more often due to measurement
error or analysis error than to real contradiction with what the preponderance
indicates.
A key point, then, is that somebody with a PhD claiming to have identified a
counterexample does not establish that those offering a general proposition have failed
in their burden of proof. The counterexample itself must pass muster as both valid in
itself and sufficient, in the generality of its implications, to invalidate the
proposition.
In the case at hand, it is not even a matter of an "outlier" point or other seeming
contradiction that has not yet been explained. Mann et al. have explained in detail why
the supposed contrary evidence offered by Baliunas et al. does NOT constitute a
counterexample. To those with some knowledge and experience in studies of this kind,
the refutation by Mann et al is completely convincing.
Sincerely,
John Holdren
At 08:08 AM 10/15/2xxx xxxx xxxx, you wrote:
Dr. Holdren:
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I genuinely appreciate you taking the time.
You are quite right about the laws of thermodynamics. And you are quite right that Mann
et al is not in the same league as those laws and that s not to take anything from their
basic research.
You write to those with knowledge and experience in studies of this kind, the refutation
by Mann et all is completely convincing. Since I do not have what you would consider
the requisite knowledge or experience, I can t speak to that. I ve read the Mann papers
and the Baliunas Soon paper and the Mann rebuttal and find Mann s claims based on his
research extravagant and beyond what he can legitimately claim to know. That said, I m
willing to believe it is because I don t have the tools necessary to understand.
But if you will indulge a lay person with some knowledge of the matter, perhaps you
could clear up a thing or two.
Part of the confusion over Mann et al it seems to me has to do not with the research
itself but with the extravagance of the claims they make based on their research.
And yet you write: Mann et al. are careful in the nature of their claim. They write
along the lines of A number of reconstructions of large-scale temperature changes
support the conclusion that the current period is the warmest in the last millennium.
And they write that the claims of Baliunas et al. are inconsistent with the
preponderance of scientific evidence .
That makes it seem as if Mann s not claiming anything particularly extraordinary based
on his research.
But Mann claimed in the NYTimes in 1998 that in their Nature study from that year Our
conclusion was that the warming of the past few decades appears to be closely tied to
emission of greenhouse gases by humans and not any of the natural factors." Does that
seem to be careful in the nature of a claim? Respected scientists like Tom Quigley
responded at the time by saying "I think there's a limit to how far you can ever go." As
for using proxy data to detect a man-made greenhouse effect, he said, "I don't think
we're ever going to get to the point where we're going to be totally convincing." These
are two scientists who would agree on the preponderance of evidence and yet they make
different claims about what that preponderance means. There are lots of respected
climatologists who would say Mann has insufficient scientific basis to make that claim.
Would you agree? The Soon Baliunas research is relevant to that element of the debate
what the preponderance of evidence enables us to claim within reason. To that end, I
don t think claims of Soon Baliunas are inconsistent with the preponderance of
scientific evidence.
I ll close by saying I m willing to admit that, as someone lacking a PhD, I could be
punching above my weight. But I will ask you a different but related question How much
hope is there for reaching reasonable public policy decisions that affect the lives of
millions if the science upon which those decisions must be made is said to be by
definition beyond the reach of those people?
All best,
Nick
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 08:46:xxx xxxx xxxx
To: "Nick Schulz" <nschulz@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
From: "John P. Holdren" <john_holdren@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: RE: Harvard Crimson coverage of Soon / Baliunas controversy
Nick--
You ask good questions. I believe the thoughtfulness of your questions and the progress
I believe we are making in this interchange contain the seeds of the answer to your
final question, which, if I may paraphrase just a bit, is whether there's any hope of
reaching reasonable public-policy decisions when the details of the science germane to
those decisions are impenetrable to most citizens.
This is a hard problem. Certainly the difficulty is not restricted to climate science
and policy, but applies also to nuclear-weapon science and policy, nuclear-energy
science and policy, genetic science and policy, and much more. But I don't think the
difficulties are insurmountable. That's why I'm in the business I'm in, which is
teaching about and working on the intersection of science and technology with policy.
Most citizens cannot penetrate the details of what is known about the how the climate
works (and, of course, what is known even by the most knowledgeable climate scientists
about this is not everything one would like to know, and is subject to modification by
new data, new insights, new forms of analysis). Neither would most citizens be able to
understand how a hydrogen bomb works (even if the details were not secret), or what
factors will determine the leak rates of radioactive nuclides from radioactive-waste
repositories, or what stem-cell research does and promises to be able to do.
But, as Amory Lovins once said in addressing the question of whether the public deserved
and could play a meaningful role in debates about nuclear-weapon policy, even though
most citizens would never understand the details of how nuclear weapons work or are
made, "You don't have to be a chicken to know what to do with an egg." In other words,
for many (but not all) policy purposes, the details that are impenetrable do not matter.
There CAN be aspects of the details that do matter for public policy, of course. In
those cases, it is the function and the responsibility of scientists who work across the
science-and-policy boundary to communicate the policy implications of these details in
ways that citizens and policy makers can understand. And I believe it is the function
and responsibility of citizens and policy makers to develop, with the help of scientists
and technologists, a sufficient appreciation of how to reach judgments about
plausibility and credibility of communications about the science and technology relevant
to policy choices so that the citizens and policy makers are NOT disenfranchised in
policy decisions where science and technology are germane.
How this is best to be done is a more complicated subject than I am prepared to try to
explicate fully here. (Alas, I have already spent more time on this interchange than I
could really afford from other current commitments.) Suffice it to say, for now, that
improving the situation involves increasing at least somewhat, over time, the scientific
literacy of our citizens, including especially in relation to how science works, how to
distinguish an extravagant from a reasonable claim, how to think about probabilities of
who is wrong and who is right in a given scientific dispute (including the question of
burden of proof as you and I have been discussing it here), how consulting and polling
experts can illuminate issues even for those who don't understand everything that the
experts say, and why bodies like the National Academy of Sciences and the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change deserve more credibility on the question of
where mainstream scientific opinion lies than the National Petroleum Council, the Sierra
Club, or the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.
Regarding extravagant claims, you continue to argue that Mann et al. have been guilty of
this, but the formulation of theirs that you offer as evidence is not evidence of this
at all. You quote them from the NYT in 1998, referring to a study Mann and co-authors
published in that year, as saying
"Our conclusion was that the warming of the past few decades appears to be closely
tied to emission of greenhouse gases by humans and not any of the natural factors."
and you ask "Does that seem to be careful in the nature of a claim?" My answer is:
Yes, absolutely, their formulation is careful and appropriate. Please note that they
did NOT say "Global warming is closely tied to emission of greenhouse gases by humans
and not any of the natural factors." They said that THEIR CONCLUSION (from a
particular, specified study, published in NATURE) was that the warming of THE PAST FEW
DECADES (that is, a particular, specified part of the historical record) APPEARS (from
the evidence adduced in the specified study) to be closely tied... This is a carefully
specified, multiply bounded statement, which accurately reflects what they looked at and
what they found. And it is appropriately contingent --"APPEARS to be closely tied" --
allowing for the possibility that further analysis or new data could later lead to a
different perspective on what appears to be true.
With respect, it does not require a PhD in science to notice the appropriate boundedness
and contingency in the Mann et al. formulation. It only requires an open mind, a
careful reading, and a degree of understanding of the character of scientific claims and
the wording appropriate to convey them that is accessible to any thoughtful citizen.
That is why I'm an optimist.
You go on to quote the respected scientist "Tom Quigley" as holding a contrary view to
that expressed by Mann. But please note that: (1) I don't know of any Tom Quigley
working in this field, so I suspect you mean to refer to the prominent climatologist Tom
Wigley; (2) the statements you attribute to "Quiqley" do not directly contradict the
careful statement of Mann (that is, it is entirely consistent for Mann to say that his
study found that recent warming appears to be tied to human emissions and for Wigley to
say that that there are limits to how far one can go with this sort of analysis, without
either one being wrong); and (3) Tom Wigley is one of the CO-AUTHORS of the resounding
Mann et al. refutation of Soon and Baliunas (see attached PDF file).
I hope you have found my responses to be of some value. I now must get on with other
things.
Best,
John Holdren
JOHN P. HOLDREN
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy
& Director, Program in Science, Technology, & Public Policy,
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs,
John F. Kennedy School of Government
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy,
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
mail: BCSIA, JFK School, 79 JFK St, Cambridge, MA 02138
phone: xxx xxxx xxxx/ fax xxx xxxx xxxx
email: john_holdren@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
assistant: Patricia_McLaughlin@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, xxx xxxx xxxx
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JOHN P. HOLDREN
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy
& Director, Program in Science, Technology, & Public Policy,
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs,
John F. Kennedy School of Government
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy,
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
mail: BCSIA, JFK School, 79 JFK St, Cambridge, MA 02138
phone: xxx xxxx xxxx/ fax xxx xxxx xxxx
email: john_holdren@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
assistant: Patricia_McLaughlin@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, 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
[4]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
References
1. http://www.techcentralstation.com/
2. mailto:john_holdren@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
3. mailto:john_holdren@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
4. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Original Filename: 1067005233.txt | Return to the index page | Permalink | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: evelyn.smith@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, "Christopher D Miller" <Christopher.D.Miller@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Fwd: confidential assessment of GCxxx xxxx xxxx
Date: Fri Oct 24 10:20:xxx xxxx xxxx
Dear Evelyn and Chris,
re. proposal review GCxxx xxxx xxxx, Meko et al. "A synthesis of 19th century climate data for the
United States from paleo, archival and instrumental sources".
I have read the "Reviewer conflict of interest and confidentiality..." document and can
state that I have no conflict of interest and will abide by the confidentiality provisions
etc.
I reviewed a very similar proposal by this group 1 year ago, and enclose my review of that
proposal below. The new proposal has taken into account my two main concerns from last
time, which were:
(i) that creation only of a blended data set that contained a time varying mixture of proxy
and instrumental data would limit the usefulness because its quality would be time varying,
perhaps in an unquantified way, and independent study of errors between proxy and observed
data would be prevented; and
(ii) that the proposed work was not very innovative in terms of the applications for which
the new information would be used.
Both of these points have been addressed adequately and so I now rate it "Excellent (5)"
for scientific/technical merit, and "High (5)" for importance/relevance and applicability.
One issue that I would like to raise, however, is that the need for quantifying
uncertainty/error in the reconstructions/database is not given much coverage in the
proposal. It is mentioned, but not focused on. For many applications (testing models,
comparison with other reconstructions, detection of unusual climate trends/events),
explicitly quantified error estimates are essential. These often change magnitude through
time, and thus should be estimated in such a way as to allow this. They may also change
with time scale (often being lower for, e.g., a decadal mean than for a single year's
value), and again the error estimation method should capture this. I do not think that
this issue detracts from the quality of the proposal. Instead I am mentioning it in the
hope that this comment can be passed on to the proposers, in the event that the project is
funded, so that they can be prompted into placing the appropriate emphasis on quantifying
uncertainty.
Apologies for being late yet again, and best regards,
Tim
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 17:14:31 +0000
Subject: confidential assessment of GCxxx xxxx xxxx
From: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: <irma.dupree@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
CC: <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,
<christopher.d.miller@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Dear Irma and Chris,
Re. proposal review GCxxx xxxx xxxx, PI: David Meko "A 19th century data catalog"
First of all, I confirm that there is no conflict of interest etc.
Now to my review...
(1) Scientific Merit
Rating: Good
Comments:
I completely agree with the rationale behind improving data sets of 19th
century climate (see my comments below on "Relevance to climate change
programme"), and the proposers have identified the most relevant data
sources available for the US. The objectives and workplan are generally
reasonable, but I have rated it "good" rather than "very good" or
"excellent" because it does not seem as scientifically innovative or
challenging as it might. Some particular concerns are highlighted below.
I am very wary about the proposed approach of integrating the data sources
together to produce a single climate product. Obviously the data sources
have to be used in combination, for calibration of proxy data or for
assessment of possibly dubious early instrumental data, *but* combining them
all into a single product only will be very restrictive for future use,
assessment, improvements. Much better would be to produce intrumental-only
series for whatever length is available, and tree-ring only series for the
full length (i.e., into the late 19th and 20th centuries, despite the
availability of instrumental data for these periods). Blending them into a
single analysis is of some, but limited, use and comparisons of different
periods and with (e.g.) model simulations can only ever be done by taking
into account error bars that vary dramatically in time and are only
estimates of the "true" errors - and the error estimates may be
underestimates if based only on residuals or covariances during the 20th
century.
No mention is made of using the 19th century data to consider key issues
such as difference between tree-ring and ground borehole temperatures (they
differ more in the 19th century, in terms of trend, than in other
centuries), possibly taking into account land-use change. No mention is
made of using the 19th century data to assess multi-century temperature
reconstructions and why they differ. These are issues of great importance.
No mention is investigating seasonal dependence of temperature changes,
which are greater in existing temperature products during the 19th century
than in the 20th century and which has important implications for the
calibration of proxy (including tree-ring) data against summer or annual
data and the need to more clearly define the true seasonal response of proxy
data.
Despite these concerns, the proposed work is certainly worthy of funding and
the extra items of interest that I mention above could be achieved using the
data generated here, in some future project.
(2) Relevance to climate change programme
Rating: High
Comments:
The 19th century is certainly of particular importance, not just for the
reasons outlined in the proposal but also because this century shows some of
the biggest disagreements in warming trend between various quasi-hemispheric
temperature reconstructions and between proxy and instrumental data and
between different seasons of instrumental data. Additional data sources are
definitely required, and additional digitisation, homogenisation and
intercomparison of data sets is necessary. For these reasons, work such as
that proposed here is essential for helping to refine answers to questions
such as how unusual is late twentieth century climate and detection of
climate change signals against the noise of natural climate variability.
Best regards
Tim