Steve McIntyre points out some inconvenient data from Law Dome.
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Re-reading Climategate and AR4 Review Comments, I noticed an interesting discussion about handling the Law Dome O18 record – a series used in Mann and Jones (2003) and Jones and Mann (2004) with a very elevated MWP.
The Law Dome O18 series was illustrated in Jones and Mann 2004 as follows (although the digital data for most series in this article was commendably archived, the digital version of the Law Dome O18 series wasn’t. After a couple of years of effort, I obtained it from Tas van Ommen.
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AR4 Second Draft Figure 6.11 purported to show the “locations of temperature-sensitive proxy records with data back to 1000, 1500 and 1750″, but, for some reason, didn’t include Law Dome, Quelccaya and other sites. The caption was as follows;
Figure 6.11. Locations of temperature-sensitive proxy records with data back to 1000, 1500 and 1750 (instrumental records: red thermometers; tree-ring: brown triangles; boreholes: black circles; ice-core/ice-boreholes: blue stars; other records including low-resolution records: purple squares). All proxies used in reconstructions [R1] to [R11] of Northern Hemisphere temperatures (see Table 6.1 and Figure 6.10) or used to indicate Southern Hemisphere regional temperatures (Figure 6.12) are included.
Neither was the Law Dome O18 data shown in Figure 6.12, illustrating SH proxy histories.
IPCC AR4 Second Draft Figure 6.12
The IPCC stated of this data:
Taken together, the very sparse evidence for Southern Hemisphere temperatures prior to the period of instrumental records indicates that warming is occurring in some regions. However, more proxy data are required to verify the apparent warm trend.
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But of course, that’s not all there is to see.
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Steve writes:
Just in case you wondered what Osborn and Overpeck didn’t want you to see, here it is:
Note that the inversion of borehole temperatures raises interesting questions equivalent to principal component retention – see prior posts on this. I’ve asked the Danish institution for the pre-inversion borehole measurements.
Read the complete story here at Climate Audit
I actually just read this post over at CA, and was interested as an antipodean resident who gets told that the MWP wasn’t “global”.
I do find Steve Mc’s posts get very technical and require a lot of patience and persistence to get through. Thanks to those that can summarise this information in more layman’s language.
In case of any disagreement with the models:
If a proxy record shows a pronounced medieval warming or lack of unprecendentedness there could by only one reason for that. The data is almost certainly wrong and it should be tossed away immediately. Additionally, Mike’s Nature trick can be used as an alternative solution.
Anthony,
I read through Steve’s full version of the post to see if I could find it, but other than the inconvenience of the proxy behavior (nothing new to anyone who has read anything about Mann or Briffa ; ) my spider-senses are tingling that maybe an important part of this is that Law Dome is in an area that the Hockey Team has implied did not experience the MWP? A little context/clarification might ne helpful.
Of course… it could also be that maybe I’m the only one who doesn’t know where Law Dome is 😀
NickB. (01:45:14) :
Law Dome is an ice dome and a research station located on the coast of Eastern Antarctica.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/atm_meth/lawdome_meth.html
It is just beyond Thunderdome. (Two men enter, one verdict leaves.)
My initial impression when I first heard of borehole temperature proxies was that I couldn’t believe anyone was actually taking these things seriously. The somewhat broad acceptance that they seem to enjoy led me to wonder if I was missing something and I must admit the math involved in the recons is stuff I haven’t dealt with in about 40 years. The fact that the math is so impenetrable and arbitrary that guys like SM and the Jeffs admit to having difficulty sorting it out, makes me think my first impression was probably correct.
Can someone provide the punch line to this controversy at Law Dome? What is the significance of this data? I am left hanging.
Quoting:
“Can someone provide the punch line to this controversy at Law Dome? What is the significance of this data? I am left hanging.”
Commenting:
It’s in that last graph. A definite Medieval Warm Period warmer than today. In Antarctica. “They” said the MWP was local to Europe – when they admitted to its existence at all, that is.
Law Dome is not the only Antarctic temperature proxy that CLEARLY shows WARMER MWP than today.
We also have the “Remote Plateau” located at the very South Pole showing warm MWP:
See black graph “37 South Pole”:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/lanser_holocene_figure7.png
Look fig 7 in this article:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/11/making-holocene-spaghetti-sauce-by-proxy/
The “Remote Plateau” or “37 South Pole”
is THIS ARTICLE:
Mosley-Thomson 1996 : “Holocene climate changes recorded in an east Antarctica”
Article here:
http://traverse.npolar.no/Resource/articles-of-interest/holocene-climate-changes-recorded-in-an-east-antarctica-ice-core-6-mb
Please have patience to download (!) and then checkout fig 6.
These high quality datapoints for every 2-3 years (ten times better than Vostok..) clearly shows 2 big warming peaks in the medieval that is warmer than today. Ont the very South pole.
These data are O18 – BUT – in the very article, it is written how to translate into temperature, see pages 276-77 i think.
So some of the best data for Antarctica is hard to download, etc. but the message is clear.
(Or take a gooood look at figure 5 here, sum of several proxies of Eastern Antarctica:
http://bprc.osu.edu/Icecore/masson.pdf)
When is Algore going to come out and settle this?
He can over rule detrimental proxies.
And what about the temps the borehole shows for the period 1000BC – 1AD? Seems to me we shouldn’t have been victims back then of the ‘runaway warming’ that we are threatened with if current temps increase more than 2C. Area was significantly warmer 2.5K years ago than today.
This record seems to indicate that the Law Dome area has been in a ‘cold’ pattern of declining temps for the last 2K years or so and is beginning a recovery?
I’m a little puzzled by the apparent ‘divergence’ of the O18 record from the borehole proxy record before about 1000AD or am I just reading too much into it.
Please explain the logic that says on the one hand that we don’t have enough evidence to say we had a global MWP, yet on the other hand Mann bases global proxy temperatures on 3 trees?
This is devastating to AGW.
Sir Steve has done it again!
It’s very cool here tonight, 2 days after Easter Sunday. We’re already in long sleeves. Unusual for the beginning of April.
Statement: Goodbye from ilovemycarbondioxide.com by Hans Schreuder.
This is of topic: but:-
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5489&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClimaterealistsNewsBlog+%28ClimateRealists+News+Blog%29
I wished him well
Anthony
OT: I know you are very busy and the task must be daunting. At least it would be for me. I am waiting with bated breath for your I-phone widget. I think you should put a price on it to compensate for the effort. Five dollars would be fine for me.
Dick G.
D. Patterson,
Thanks for the reply!
Snake Oil Baron,
Thanks for the laugh! I was going to reply by initials but decided it would probably be better to write out your name. Never noticed that before, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence right? ; )
A MWP signal in Antarctica… I think that could qualify as an inconvenient truth for the Hockey Team
*cue dramatic chipmunk
Dah-dah-duuuuuuummmmm!
Please note, the Law Dome results are based upon three ice cores.
Word is starting to percolate up into the consciousness of the general public: click
Heads up and somewhat O/T-
Great article in the WSJ opinion section today –
What’s the Next ‘Global Warming’?
On line it’s behind a subscribe wall so let me summarize:
(Bret Stephens is the writer and he starts with-)
So global warming is dead, nailed into its coffin one devastating disclosure, defection and re-evaluation at a time. Which means that pretty soon we’re going to ‘need another apocalyptic scare to take its place.
(Mr. Stephens then summarizes numerous reports that have appeared here and else ware, then writes-)
Something is going to have to take its place.
The world is now several decades into the era of environmental panic. The subject of the panic changes every few years, but the basic ingredients tend to remain fairly constant.
(1) A trend, a hypothesis, an invention or a discovery disturbs the sense of global equilibrium. Often the agent of distress is undetectable to the senses, like a malign spirit.
(2) A villain – invariably corporate and right-wing – is identified.
(3) Then money begins to flow toward grant-seeking institutions and bureaucracies, which have an interest in raising the level of alarm.
(4) Environmentalists counsel their version of virtue, typically some quasi-totalitarian demands on the pattern of human behavior.
(5) Politicians assemble expert panels and propose sweeping and expensive legislation.
(6) Eventually, the problem vanishes. Few people stop to consider that perhaps it wasn’t such a crisis in the first place,
This is what’s called eschatology-a belief, or psychology, that we are approaching the End Time.
(He then makes a religious analogy and then writes-)
Given the inescapability of weather, it’s no wonder global warming gripped the public mind as long as it did. And there’s always some extreme-weather event happening somewhere to be offered as further evidence of impending catastrophe. But even weather gets boring, and so do the people who natter about it incessantly. What this decade requires is a new and better panic.
Herewith I propose a contest to invent the next panic.
It must involve something ubiquitous, invisible to the naked eye, and preferably mass-produced. And the solution must require taxes, regulation, and other changes to civilization as we know it. The winner gets a beer and a burger, on me, at the 47th street Pig N’ Whistle in New York City. (Nachos for vegetarians.) Happy panicking!
By Bret Stephens
WSJ
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
Who better than us here to come up with a winner?
(Numbering in the above was by me)
Bob Hornbeck
It’s the water, stupid!
John S. (05:34:24) :
Please explain the logic that says on the one hand that we don’t have enough evidence to say we had a global MWP, yet on the other hand Mann bases global proxy temperatures on 3 trees?
John S., you are obviously not seeing the wider picture and, eeh, necessity to act now.
PS. I take CET record over any NH proxy any day.
Let’s see. There are lots of proxy data sets, and some show more or less MWP than others at different times and places. Therefore, there was a global MWP and that proves that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas and/or humans aren’t dumping gigatons of it every year into the atmosphere. Sorry, can someone explain the middle part a bit more clearly?
Smokey (06:45:16) :
As long as there are financial institutions, banks, NGO´s pouring money, the Club of Rome elite financing the promotion and marketing of this scam of Climate Change (Aka: “Global Warming”), these contributions, serious studies, real science papers, intelligent books, are but a few drops in a desert. Their objective “buyers”, their “market niché” is the majority of uninformed people, even they resort to innocent childrens´indoctrination: All over the world (the WHOLE world, not only the USA), everyday in almost every classroom, children are taught abot “climate change”, are taught how to “reccycle” to avoid the inminent armageddon. How do you call this?, what measures, if any, are to be taken to stop this insanity?.
Milwaukee Bob (06:45:28) :
Got one idea for you: COPY AND PASTE
“All earthquakes, all tsunamis, beginning with the december 2004 Sumatra earthquake and tsunami, all natural disasters now happening, are caused as a reaction, and as a revenge, a retaliation of our wise Mother Nature against those idiotic ideas promoted by Al Gore and other people who have been believing and passing the word about the unexisting phenomenon called by them “Climate Change”. As it has been shown, all measures invented by them and taken against our Mother Nature as the diabolic idea of reducing CO2, the transparent gas we all exhale and green plants breath, in order to produce the oxygen we breath and which makes possible life itself, has profoundly affected the health of our beloved mother earth, so we must reject all those stupid ideas and pass the word about the dangerous consequences we are now facing because of them.
Milwaukee Bob (06:45:28) :
I vote for a cometary or meteor impact possibility. This as two benefits:
One, they might actually use taxes for something useful-like really saving the
Planet.
Two it would get NASA back into the Space Program and not Navel Gazing…
OK, three things. The Warmists could blame the impending strike on our inflated warm atmosphere dragging the errant rock into the Planet….
Grants all around!..