Congratulations DK

Congratulations to eminent hydrologist and occasional (well, once!) BH guest author Demetris Koutsoyiannis, who has been awarded the Dooge Medal for his services to hydrology and climatology.

Also worth reading is the speech Koutsoyiannis gave in response to the award, which describes some of his past and present difficulties in getting his work published:

...my relationship with rejections continues to be fruitful; for example, last year I was able to receive, for a single paper, eight rejections by eight different journals and eventually publish that paper.

The gatekeepers are still busy.

Comments

[pesadia]

I wonder if this gentleman has expressed an opinion on
Trenbeths missing heat finding it's way to the bottom of
the ocean.

[omnologos]

who's going to resign for this medal?

[bernie1815]

His speech is just a series of thank yous to important mentors and colleagues. Is there more to the backstory? How much of a skeptic is Prof. Demetris Koutsoyiannis? Are the rejections truly politically motivated? Any chance of a link on the paper he mentioned that received 8 rejections?

[Steve C]

Demetris, if you're getting all those rejections, you must be forgetting to include the magic phrase
"In a warming world ..." :-)

[jack savage]

Off topic but interesting. In the Guardian...the moderators are preventing Richard Tol from commenting on a Nuccitelli piece about ....er.....Richard Tol !

Shurely peak Guardian moderation!

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/jun/02/republican-witness-global-warming-consensus-real?commentpage=1

[jack savage]

Ha! They have realised their error and reinstated the comment! I have the screenshot if anyone wants it.....

[jack savage]

Amusingly.......my comment made over there drawing their attention to their cock-up has completely (and I mean completely!) disappeared.

It read

" It would appear that the moderators are not allowing Richard Tol to comment on this column about....er... Richard Tol.
Peak Guardian Moderation! "

Again, a screenshot of my comment and the shot of Tol's comment being censored are available if anyone wants it. I learned long ago that no comment over at the Grun is safe from being consigned to the memory hole and I always take a screenshot these days.

How we larffed!

[Martin A]

I remember that Demetris Koutsoyiannis posted some papers that were out of line with the Consensus.

I stumbled across a posting by him from 2009, shortly after Climategate.

http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/beware-saviors-by-demetris-koutsoyiannis/

[Messenger]

I seem to remember the Bishop was at one time, unable to comment on rude remarks made about him by Ward in the Grauniad, as he, the Bishop, was a non- person as far as CiF were concerned..

[MikeC]

http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/beware-saviors-by-demetris-koutsoyiannis/
Jun 3, 2014 at 2:43 PM | Registered Commenter Martin A

That is a five gold star article.

[Patagon]

Most of his publications can be accessed in full at: http://itia.ntua.gr/dk/
Interesting reading, some papers quite critical of accepted hypotheses

[knr]

jack savage the fun part is the Guardian never admits to ‘disappearing’ posts and the irony is one very good way of getting a post ‘disappeared’ is to mention it happens. As for Cooks , usual BS with usual lapdogs yipping in attendance and usual heavy moderation in his favour . Frankly we all better off ignoring his posts and letting them get on with their circle w**k which is what they want anyway.

[Demetris Koutsoyiannis]

Thank you very much Bishop! Also thanks to everybody for the comments, for reading this post and visiting the linked sites (I see a lot of visits to my web site).

As per rejections, the paper referred to here (with the 8 rejections) is about entropy and is not directly connected to climate matters. More information about rejections can be found in my post http://itia.ntua.gr/blog/2013/12/14/record-rejections/

In general, I would not say that rejections are always politically motivated or dictated by the climate change orthodoxy. Well, often they are (examples are contained in the link above and elsewhere) but not always. Criticizing or opposing established ideas makes rejections more likely, whatever these ideas are. In contrast, as put by Steve, including magic phrases like "in a warming world ..." (especially in the paper title) may make the paper rejection-proof.

But I do not complain about rejections--as I explained in my speech my rejections brought me luck and recognition.

[Skiphil]

Hearty congratulations are indeed in order to Professor Koutsoyiannis!

It seems worth emphasizing that he is the very FIRST recipient of the Dooge Medal, since any organization selecting the first recipient for such an honor is most likely to select someone regarded as the very most extraordinary for that research field (in order to establish the award on the highest possible standing in the research community). The IAHS citation says as much (see below).

clickable Hyperlink to Prof. Demetris Koutsoyiannis, Home Page

Demetris Koutsoyiannis Home Page

Demetris Koutsoyiannis is professor in Hydrology and Analysis of Hydrosystems at the Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, of the National Technical University of Athens (and former Head of the Department). He is also Co-Editor of Hydrological Sciences Journal and member of the editorial board of Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (and formerly of Journal of Hydrology and Water Resources Research). He has been awarded the International Hydrology Prize – Dooge medal (2014) by the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) with the UNESCO and the World Meteorlogical Organization (WMO), as well as the Henry Darcy Medal (2009) by the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

Main research contributions – Views and opinions

....
....

========================================================================

IAHS citation: "He is a truly ideal candidate for the awarding of the first Dooge medal in view of his great hydrological achievements"

He is a truly ideal candidate for the awarding of the first Dooge medal in view of his great hydrological achievements:

He provided outstanding contributions to improving our understanding of the time variability of hydrological, meteorological and climatic processes. He advanced our knowledge of the random behavior of physical systems through a forward-looking perspective and the development of new theories.
He is an internationally recognized leader in the field. His contributions and his scientific excellence are globally known and were already recognized by the European Geosciences Union who awarded him with the Henry Darcy Medal in 2009. In the past few years he has served on the editorial board of 4 international journals.
He has provided an extremely relevant service to the international community of hydrologists and in particular to IAHS. In fact, he has been Deputy Editor of the Hydrological Sciences Journal from 2006 to 2009, and Co-Editor since then. He also played an active role in shaping the scientific program of “Panta Rhei”. His contribution to the scientific community also includes reviewing and editing over 550 articles submitted to 42 different scientific journals. He strongly promotes eponymous reviewing, and since 1998, all of his reviews have been eponymous.

[Roy]

By coincidence there is a letter in today's Daily Telegraph from an eminent group of scientists complaining that peer review is stifling research in unfashionable fields. The words "consensus" and "climate change" do not occur in the letter.

The damaging bureaucracy of academic peer preview
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/10870609/The-damaging-bureaucracy-of-academic-peer-preview.html

[tom0mason]

Well done Demetris Koutsoyiannis, IMO you deserve more.
I can do no better than to quote from your paper
Climate change, Hurst phenomenon, and hydrologic statistics

SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION

According to the experts of climate modelling, “the current state of affairs is not satisfactory” (Barnett et al., 1999) in terms of prediction capabilities of the climate evolution and quantification of the related uncertainty. Moreover, the unpredictability of future climate in deterministic terms may by a structural characteristic of the climate system (rather than a matter of current weaknesses of models) since, according to von Storch et al. (2001), “climate must be considered as a stochastic system”.

Therefore, probability-based methods may be good alternatives to quantify uncertainty, even under a varying climate. However, hydrologic statistics, the branch of hydrology that deals with uncertainty, has been based on the implicit assumption of a stable climate. This disagrees with the fact that climate has ever, through the planet history, changed irregularly on all time scales, as witnessed by long hydroclimatic time series. Observed shifts in such time series were often regarded as deterministic components (trends or jumps) and removed from the time series so that the residual can be processed using classic statistics. This would be an efficient approach if a deterministic model existed, which could explain these components and also predict their future. This, however, is hardly the case, as most typically the trends or shifts are identified only a posteriori and expressed mathematically by equations lacking physical meaning (e.g. using linear regression) and thus applicable only to the relevant parts of the time series and not in their future evolution. A more consistent alternative is to approach this behaviour in a stochastic manner....

[tom0mason]

Attribution for the quoted paper above is from -
http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=OPA_BScAAAAJ&citation_for_view=OPA_BScAAAAJ:u5HHmVD_uO8C

Also through Google citation search for Demetris Koutsoyiannis at scholar.google.com/citations

[Spence_UK]

Many congratulations to Dr Koutsoyiannis on a thoroughly well deserved award.

I would recommend Demetris' latest presentation given at the EGU General Assembly around a month ago in Vienna:

http://itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/1441/

In particular, I would recommend people contrast slide 12 of the presentation above with the claims of the met office recently reported by the BBC, on the ability of climate models to predict changes in precipitation :)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27624478

[Brute]

Rejection in academic/scientific journals is commonplace nowadays. Only conventional banality from "registered" authors gets through easily. It is also the reason why many journals have become trash worthy. Note that I'm speaking here as an editor and author.

[jamspid]

[Snip - O/T. There is discussion forum for this kind of thing. Also raise the tone please]

[Energeitic]

From the Pielke Sr Blog i found the paper D. Koutsoyiannis: A random walk on water
http://itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/923/.
I am reading it and i urge anyone on this blog to read it .
Do yourself the favour and take the time to read it.
It is one of he most educating and enlightning texts i have read about (un)predictability.
It's key feature is the introduction of a toy model, the study of its behaviour and the consequences for its predictability.