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Bishop Hill

Here come the cavalry...

Aug 15, 2010

Climate: Statistics

This thread is for discussion of the McShane and Wyner paper, which looks as though it is going to be a pretty significant contribution to the Hockey Stick debate. Well, it has got Real Climate deleting comments again anyway...

113 comments

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Reader Comments (113)

I think 'satellite-gate' is more important than this new paper.

For at least4 years NOAA has known about the serious degradation and compromising of the satellite system that monitors this planet's environment and climate. The data sets that NOAA produces and sells on to governments and research institutions are seriously flawed. That means that government decisions and policies, and numerous research papers on a broad range of climate change studies have been compromised.

It has been discovered independently that at least five satellite programs have been identified as being either degraded or seriously compromised:

1. Landsat 7 (currently in orbit) is broken leaving data gaps. Scientists do not get all the information they should.

2. NPOESS (National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite) will not have any sensors that measure the sun’s energy output on the 2nd and 4th satellites.

3. GOES-R (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series) has had 14 sensors cancelled. No data for cloud base height, ozone layer, ocean color, ocean turbidity and cloud imagery, snow cover, etc. Effectively neutered.

4. No sensor for movement of greenhouse gases and pollutants. No sensor to monitor temperature changes on Earth over time. (NOAA didn’t even bother to try to get the funding to keep the eliminated sensors!).

5. The sensor to measure how Earth’s temperature reacts to changes in Solar energy was cancelled by the Obama Administration at the end of June 2010.

Aug 17, 2010 at 10:52 AM |

Mac

“The sensor to measure how Earth’s temperature reacts to changes in Solar energy was cancelled by the Obama Administration at the end of June 2010”

Presumably, they don’t want real empirical data interfering with their nice hypothetical models...

Aug 17, 2010 at 1:49 PM |

James P

#jp

We have claims by NOAA that the last ten years have been the hottest on record, a good part of these claims is due to the satellite program under NOAA's direction. If the satellite data have been erroneously recording much higher temps than actually occured, and NOAA knew about it for at least 4 years, then we have another scandal on our hands.

Aug 17, 2010 at 2:03 PM |

Mac

DrCrinum

I'm aware of the problems with proxy selection/inversion/processing, and they are very major and real problems with the Mann/Briffa/Jones studies. Although this latest paper addresses mainly the processing, the other problems are well known as well.

But does this mean that no proxies can ever be used even if done rigorously?

I'm looking at Fig. 18 and Footnote 12 in this paper.

The tracking seems to be pretty close until the last 30-40 years.

Now what if the instrumental record of the last 30-40 years is wrong because of UHI and homogenization? What if the real temperatures are actually closer to the models forecast? Wouldn't that imply that the use of proxies may not be a totally useless endeavour in the more general sense?

Aug 17, 2010 at 2:30 PM |

Sandy C

Doh!
if the proxies are currently showing the truth then the world has been cooling since 1960, that hardly backs up the models?

Aug 17, 2010 at 3:48 PM |

Dung

Sandy C:
To which models do you refer? You can't possibly mean that proxies be trained against computer models?

Aug 17, 2010 at 3:58 PM |

Bernie

Dung

I'm not talking about the IPCC GCM models, but the model predictions referred to in figure 18 of the paper we're discussing.

Aug 17, 2010 at 4:01 PM |

Sandy C

Just to clarify, since the use of the word 'models' seems to have been a poor choice.

We know, or strongly suspect, that there are problems with the official instrumental records such as UHI, station selection, homogenization...

What if these problems were sufficient to explain the divergence seen in fig 18b?

Wouldn't that imply that proxies are not totally useless? Of course that would also imply that we have not been warming very much in the last 30-40 years.

Aug 17, 2010 at 4:25 PM |

Sandy C

Suggest that your readers take a stroll through William Briggs droll review of the MW 2010 paper. Great use of hockey-related metaphors complete with a glossary for those who don't follow the sport. The articles cited in his second footnote are also worth reading. (Courtesy of a WUWT reader.)

www.wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2773rt.

Aug 17, 2010 at 5:05 PM |

RayG

Sandy C

The data are useless, and the analyses are useless. They therefore imply nothing. You can infer even less.

Time to sweep out the charlatans and do some real science. That has not happened.

Aug 17, 2010 at 6:24 PM |

Don Pablo de la Sierra

Why didn't scientists involved in climate reconstruction take Wegman's advice and collaborate more closely with professional statisticians (and avoid this embarrassment)? The answers seems to be obvious:

First the Hockey team hasn't needed the additional credibility professional statisticians could provide to get their work published in elite journals. The editors of Science and Nature have continued to publish their work despite the stench rising from the flaws that have been uncovered. I wouldn't be surprised to see both journals completely ignore McShane and Wyner in their news and commentary sections. I suspect that the Hockey Team and the journals will be able to find reviewers who will accept future papers from the Team despite this setback.

Second, professional statisticians would make the climate scientist's job more difficult. Their job is to show that the MWP is not inconsistent with current climate models, not find the "truth". The "truth" about the MWP is unlikely to ever be known with a useful degree of certainty. As long as the Hockey Team cannot be proven wrong they can wrong about the most important issue - CLIMATE during the MWP - non-climatic issues involving statistical purity aren't going to matter.

Aug 17, 2010 at 7:11 PM |

Frank

Sandy C

Good line of thinking

Are the trees responding to temperatures 'correctly'? Maybe they are.
Put a thermometer next to each tree, leave them there for next ten years and then take measurements.

The MWP peak in the tree proxies - maybe it corresponds to higher real temperatures but they 'diverge' there as well.

Aug 17, 2010 at 10:46 PM |

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