Bishop Hill Best keep quiet
Mar 23, 2011 Climate: Surface Lots of fun is being had over the preliminary findings from the Berkelely Earth Surface Temperature project (BEST). The project team had made an announcement stating that they had processed 2% of the data through the algorithm and found the results showed warming.
A preliminary analysis of 2% of the Berkeley Earth dataset shows a global temperature trend that goes up and down with global cycles, and does so broadly in sync with the temperature records from other groups such as NOAA, NASA, and Hadley CRU. However, the preliminary analysis includes only a very small subset (2%) of randomly chosen data, and does not include any method for correcting for biases such as the urban heat island effect, the time of observation bias, etc. The Berkeley Earth team feels very strongly that no conclusions can yet be drawn from this preliminary analysis.
Scientist Ken Caldeira, who is not part of the team then decided to completely ignore the caveats and declare that CRU, GISS et al were vindicated:
I have seen a copy of the Berkeley group’s draft paper, which of course would be expected to be revised before submission.
Their preliminary results sit right within the results of NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU, confirming that prior analyses were correct in every way that matters. Their results confirm the reality of global warming and support in all essential respects the historical temperature analyses of the NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU.
Their analysis supports the view that there is no fire behind the smokescreen put up by climate science deniers.
So despite the enormous caveats put out by the BEST team, Caldeira has gone right ahead and drawn conclusions that suit his political case, with his statement then repeated by the usual suspects like Romm.
Anthony Watts has the full story.
Steven Mosher, who has been to meet the BEST team, has posted some interesting comments at Keith Kloor's site:
Zeke and I made a visit to discuss a few things with [BEST]. So they shared some very preliminary charts. 2% stuff. And we discussed what stage they were at in the project. We met with a good number of the team. I volunteered to do some R coding. They work in Matlab. I also volunteered to pass a couple papers along that covered some issues. We exchanged some mails, primarily on what I needed to get working on the data formats. Zeke wrote a nice piece on our visit over at Lucia’s. I was gunna write one, but Zeke did a complete job, so what’s the point.
Romm then writes a post reporting that Ken had read the draft paper. This made no sense to me given the briefing that Zeke and I had received. The full data set had not been run through the algorithm, especially one key part, a really cool part.. So the idea that there was a draft paper made no sense to me. maybe the methods part could be written, but hardly the conclusions. Anyways I did some checking and turns out that Ken was reading another paper the team was working on.. not the surface stations paper. At least thats the best info I have. Now, Im told that Romm is foaming at the mouth. sheesh. what a marroon.
More comment at Andy Russell's.
Reader Comments (54)
Pat Frank
Thanks for the Emery reference. As for ‘how do they know’, it’s sea level rise estimates from satellite altimetry that really get me going.
Pat Frank
Interesting links. The quick-and-dirty conclusion is that there is likely a warm bias to older satellite-derived SST estimates and that it is sufficiently systematic to preserve an underlying trend.
WRT measuring the troposphere (eg the 600mb layer with AQUA channel 5) I can't see any evidence for similar concerns. That doesn't endorse or guarantee the accuracy of the data of course - but nobody seems seriously to question it.
So we are left with trends indicative of general warming, both in SSTs and tropospheric temps, as well as all records of surface temperature. Fuzzy on the detail, clear in outline.
As we know the blackboard physics and emergent values from AOCGM ensemble runs point to a median climate sensitivity to CO2 of +3K for a doubling of pre-industrial levels. But is this too high? As always, we end up back at the climate sensitivity question. And as always, the various observations aren't quite clear enough to validate or invalidate the hypothesised value. Whatever Gavin Schmidt and others claim.
Very interesting. Thanks for engaging.
BBD, "quick-and-dirty" calculations made in 1900 would conclude that discrete line spectra cannot exist, that Earth cannot be more than a few million years old, and that black bodies emit infinite power; none correct. Radiation Physics is the "q-a-d" calculation about climate sensitivity and includes no tropical hydrology and no clouds. Conclusions about climate based on RP are very likely very wrong.
I don't see how trends in systematic error preserve anything, particularly when the magnitude of the 20th century systematic error is generally unknown and has never been tested or monitored.
Just noticed that Watts has updated his post - the 2% sample was not from Japan, it was random:
"ERRATA: I made a mistake regarding the 2% figure, I misheard what was being presented during my visit with the BEST team at Berkeley. As many of you may know I’m about 80% hearing impaired and the presentation made to me was entirely verbal with some printed graphs. Based on the confidentiality I agreed to, I did not get to come back with any of those graphs, notes, or data so I had to rely on what I heard. I simply misheard and thought the 2% were the Japan station analysis graphs that they showed me."