Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
A learned man was arguing with a rube named Nasruddin. The learned man asked “What holds up the Earth?” Nasruddin said “It sits on the back of a giant turtle.” The learned man knew he had Nasruddin then. The learned man asked “But what holds up the turtle”, expecting Nasruddin to be flustered by the question. Nasruddin simply smiled. “Sure, and as your worship must know being a learned man, it’s turtles all the way down …”
I’ve written before of the dangers of mistaking the results of the ERA-40 and other “re-analysis” computer models for observations or data. If we just compare models to models and not to data, then it’s “models all the way down,” not resting on real world data anywhere.
I was wondering where on the planet I could demonstrate the problems with ERA-40. I happened to download the list of stations used in the CRUTEM3 analysis, and the first one was Jan Mayen Island. “Perfect”, I thought. Middle of nowhere, tiny dot, no other stations for many gridcells in any direction.
Figure 1. Location of Jan Mayen Island, 70.9°N, 8.7°W. White area in the upper left is Greenland. Gridpoints for the ERA-40 analysis shown as red diamonds. Center gridpoint data used for comparisons.
How does the ERA-40 reanalysis data stack up against the Jan Mayen ground data?
Figure 2. Actual temperature data for Jan Mayen Island and ERA-40 nearest gridpoint reanalysis “data”. NCAR data from KNMI. Jan Mayen data from GISS.
It’s not pretty. The ERA-40 simulated data runs consistently warmer than the observations in both the summer and the winter. The 95% confidence intervals of the two means (averages) don’t overlap, meaning that they come from distinct populations. Often the ERA-40 data is two or more degrees warmer in the winter. But occasionally and unpredictably, ERA-40 is 3 to 5 degrees cooler in winter. Jan Mayen’s year-round average is below freezing. The average of the ERA-40 is above freezing. The annual cycle of the two, as shown in Figure 3 below, is also revealing.
Figure 3. Two annual cycles (Jan-Dec) of the ERA-40 synthetic data and Jan Mayen temperature. Photo Source
The ERA-40 synthetic data runs warmer than the observations in every single month of the year. On average, it is 1.3°C warmer . In addition, the distinctive winter signature of Jan Mayen (February averages warmer than either January or March) is not captured at all in the ERA-40 synthetic data.
So that’s why I say, don’t be fooled by people talking about “reanalysis data”. It is a reanalysis model, and from first indications not all that good a reanalysis model. If you want to understand the actual winter weather in Jan Mayen, you’d be well-advised to avoid the ERA-40, or February will bite you in the ice.
The use of “reanalysis data” has some advantages. Because the reanalysis data is gridded, it can be compared directly to model outputs. It is mathematically more challenging to compare the model outputs to point data.
But that should be a stimulus to develop better mathematical comparison methods. It shouldn’t be a reason to interpose a second model in between the first model and the data. All that can do is increase the uncertainty.
In addition, due to the fact that both models involved (various GCMs and the ERA-40) are related conceptually (being current generation climate models), we would expect the correlations to be artificially high. In other words, a model’s output is likely to have a better fit to another related model’s output than it does to observational data. Data is ugly and has sudden jumps and changes. Computer model output is smooth and continuous. Which will fit better?
My conclusion? The ERA-40 is unsuited for the purpose of validating model results. Compare model results to real data, not to the ERA-40. Comparing models to models is a non-starter.
Regards to everyone,
w.
[UPDATE] Several people have asked about the sea surface temperatures in the area. Here they are:
Figure 4. As in Figure 2, but including HadSST sea surface temperature (SST) data for the gridcell containing Jan Mayen. SST data from KNMI
Figure 5. As in Figure 3, but including HadSST sea surface temperature (SST) data for the gridcell containing Jan Mayen. SST data from KNMI
Note that SST is always higher than the Jan Mayen temperature. This is not true for the ERA-40 reconstruction model output.
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Willis, if you did not exist we would have to invent you.
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better
experiment.”
– Lord Ernest Rutherford
Post-normal science involves comparing models to expectations, and not real measured data. Willis, keep bringing us the “normal” science.
Some info and photo galleries here: http://www.jan-mayen.no/
Click on: “Meteorological station – The station”, left menu and you can see the Stevenson screen.
@ur momisugly John V. Wright. You are right, there is only one Willis, and the world would be a lot poorer without him.
Mind you, I’m a bit suspicious of that particular Nasruddin story. I’m a Nasruddin fan from way back, and I don’t recall that one. Which may just prove my ignorance, of course.
Just as an aside, if you walk down Swanston St Melbourne (VIC), you will find a Chinese Muslim dumpling place. Its English name is something bland like Swanston St Dumpling Restaurant, but its name in Chinese characters is Afanti. That’s the Chinese name for Nasruddin, derived from the Turkish word Effendi. I first made that correspondence in the northern winter of 1985/86, when I was in China studying to improve my Chinese. The teacher told us a few anecdotes about Afanti – looking for the lost key under the street-light, that sort of thing. A couple of us had delved into Sufism and comparative religion and stuff, so we asked “Isn’t Afanti just a variant of Nasruddin?” And eventually, after lots of discussion, we agreed that the answer was “yes”. I mention that mainly to show the enormous geographic and cultural spread of the Nasruddin stories. That very spread, in itself, pretty much negates my claim to know what might be, and what might not be, an authentic parable.
Another very interesting offering Willis, grounded in common sense. There wouyld appear to be no shortage of pieces which demonstrate the fragility of the science used to promote AGW.
Having said that, none of these revealing articles and explanations seem to be making any inroads on policy decisions.
I think that the science has now become secondary to the precautionary principle and would dearly love to see somebody, yourself or Judith Curry. look into this aspect of the debate.
John V. Wright says:
March 8, 2011 at 2:33 am
“Willis, if you did not exist we would have to invent you.”
————————————————————–
Yes but could We make him as fast and strong? – We don’t have the money, We don’t have the technology
Well done Willis!
When I had my two pints of bitter with my fellow chorister back in March ’10, who works at the Wet Office on climate science & puter modelling (including the notorious ash cloud models), to convince me of my evil ways about not believing in the new godless faith of CAGW. He could not refute one jot of the science I had quoted in a letter to the Parish magazine! He proceeded to describe the “abilities” of the models to reproduce past climates, (allegedly), & they produce the same temperature graph of the last 150 years that one could produce by hand if necessary, as if this was some kind of mystical magic. He seemed quite purturbed & disturbed that I pointed out that a computer programe has to be programmed to produce certain effects, by humans prone to error & misjudgement & bias, & that these models cannot produce these effects or likenesses of climagte without being made to by their programmers, based on uncertainties & assumptions of how what interacts with what in the climate. He couldn’t grasp that simple fact at all. Just look for example at every attempt by scientists to establish a real link with Homepopathic medicines (no offence I know they work for some). Every effort has stalled at the final hurdle because they produced the result they wanted, not what actually occurred! These were good people, not fools, but they fell for the bias trap by accident! AND they were picked up by statisticians to boot!
“Compare model results to real data, not to the ERA-40.”
Aww – ‘real data’, nooo, that can’t be done! Modelers would actually have to leave their well-ventilated computer rooms and go outside where there’s the chance they could meet real weather – far too dangerous!
And anyway, real data have this nasty habit of not agreeing with the shiny, smooth models. Best get rid of real data, no?
/very heavy sarc!
“Comparing models to models is a non-starter.”
Oh no it’s not!
Not, that is, if one’s a climate ‘scientist’, working one’s butt off to get the next tranche of funding, while pal-reviewing papers and getting one’s own through to publication in Nature!
/more heavy sarc …
One would like to know why climate scientists seem to be so unwilling to leave their labs. There are loads of proper, high tech clothes for surviving in the deep freeze which they surely can afford? I mean, if amateurs manage to climb Everest, they ought to be able to visit Jan Mayen, which is at sea level, no? Or are they scared of meeting some irate poley bears?
As soon as I read the title of this post, I knew it would be by you, Willis!
😉
Of course, to judge by my eyeballing, a cynic might wonder why winter temperatures under ERA-40 are only cooler prior to 1980 and the impact of CO2 hypothesis requires a warming trend from that time.
if the result doesnt match their theory, they rewrite the data to make it so…
science? what science?
Willis,
You are very inconvenient for those credentialed experts who are your betters.
How big is the grid cell you are comparing with the point data for Jan Mayen Island?
As it’s an island would you expect the sea surrounding the island to be warmer or cooler than the island itself?
I’d expect it to be warmer and as a result I’d expect the averged value for the whole grid cell to be warmer than the point data for the island.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this matter.
As someone else said somewhere(?) ‘This is so pre post-normal.’
Willis, thanks once again for highlighting the relationship of theory to its data.
“It’s turtles all the way down” has the ring of a catch phrase about it – sort of like “It’s worse than we thought”…
Will it find its way into the lexicon in the same way?! 🙂
To echo a comment in the earlier post about the forthcoming Spectator Global Warming debate, they should have invited you, Willis.
The only way to develop useful predictive models is to look for ways to falsify their output. That is, to validate their output by comparing it to real data. It seems that is the very last thing climate modellers want to do.
This famous email: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=419
Has an interesting exchange that is relevant here.
From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004
Mike,
Only have it in the pdf form. FYI ONLY – don’t pass on. Relevant paras are the last 2 in section 4 on p13. As I said it is worded carefully due to Adrian knowing Eugenia for years. He knows the’re wrong, but he succumbed to her almost pleading with him to tone it down as it might affect her proposals in the future ! I didn’t say any of this, so be careful how you use it – if at all. Keep quiet also that you have the pdf.
The attachment is a very good paper – I’ve been pushing Adrian over the last weeks to get it submitted to JGR or J. Climate. The main results are great for CRU and also for ERA-40. The basic message is clear – you have to put enough surface and sonde
obs into a model to produce Reanalyses. The jumps when the data input change stand out so clearly. NCEP does many odd things also around sea ice and over snow and ice.
The other paper by MM is just garbage – as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well – frequently as I see it.
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
Cheers
Phil
Mike,
For your interest, there is an ECMWF ERA-40 Report coming out soon, which shows that Kalnay and Cai are wrong. It isn’t that strongly worded as the first author is a personal friend of Eugenia. The result is rather hidden in the middle of the report.
It isn’t peer review, but a slimmed down version will go to a journal. KC are wrong because the difference between NCEP and real surface temps (CRU) over eastern N. America doesn’t happen with ERA-40. ERA-40 assimilates surface temps (which NCEP didn’t) and doing this makes the agreement with CRU better. Also ERA-40’s trends in the lower atmosphere are all physically consistent where NCEP’s are not – over eastern US.
Hide the Nitrogen and Oxygen!
That’s the game they are playing.
I awoke this morning and suddenly realized that AGW warmist scientist believers in general, are playing the same game Mann, et al, engaged in with their ‘Hide the Decline!”
I posted this on Ira’s “Visualizing ‘Greenhouse effect’…” topic a few days ago, and watched to see how various readers here would respond to it.
——————————–
Domenic says:
March 2, 2011 at 7:22 am
Are the data in HITRAN observed or calculated?
The parameters in HITRAN are sometimes direct observations, but often calculated. These calculations are the result of various quantum-mechanical solutions. The goal of HITRAN is to have a theoretically self-consistent set of parameters, while at the same time attempting to maximize the accuracy. References for the source are included for the most important parameters on each line of the database.
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/hitran/
The whole basis for the AGW argument rests on their misunderstanding of the true ‘greenhouse effect’. N2 and O2 are indeed members of ‘greenhouse gases’. ALL component gases of the atmosphere contribute to the ‘greenhouse effect’.
It is because the AGW proponents ignore that fact, that the miniscule effects of a trace gas like CO2 is blown way out of proportion and they make absurd assumptions, claims, and predictions.
For example:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
Gavin Schmidt’s article here shows the complete fiction, fabrications of people completely deluded and ignorant of the basic sciences.
Gavin noted his puzzlement over Lindzen’s observation here:
“So where does the oft quoted “98%” number come from? This proves to be a little difficult to track down. Richard Lindzen quoted it from the IPCC (1990) report in a 1991 QJRMS review* as being the effect of water vapour and stratiform clouds alone, with CO2 being less than 2%. However, after some fruitless searching I cannot find anything in the report to justify that (anyone?). The calculations here (and from other investigators) do not support such a large number and I find it particularly odd that Lindzen’s estimate does not appear to allow for any overlap.”
If Gavin had even a tiny background in heat transfer, and thermal properties, he would have recognized that the 98% H2O, 2% CO2 numbers come from their relative specific heat capacities times their respective amounts in the atmosphere.
I actually think Lindzen was being generous regarding CO2 effects here. To me, the more accurate number would be
CO2 0.05%
ALL other ‘greenhouse gases 99.95%.
CO2 literally can’t absorb enough heat to do much of anything even if it doubles or triples or quadruples….”
———————————-
The whole argument of the AGW scientists rests on ignoring the largest, by far, components of the atmosphere, thus the largest components of the ‘greenhouse effect’.
This needs to be pointed out.
Most people now recogonize Mann’s “Hide the Decline!”…
Now it is time to point out their other delusion: “Hide the N2 and O2!”
A call for papers and articles….
I think from this point of view we can capture the imagination of readers and drive the debate towards a real truth.
I have heard the comment that the models can’t be independently evaluated against historical data, because they have ‘used up’ all the data in tuning the model.
But – it seems they didn’t – they used up the homogenized ‘cheese spread’ synthetic data. The REAL data is still out there waiting to be used for comparison.
Comparing model results to real data can’t be that hard. Back in grad school days, we would establish comparison points to determine goodness of fit, Delta = (Calculated – Actual), and sum the Deltas over all comparison points. To avoid the ‘overs’ from canceling the ‘unders’, it is common to compute the square of the difference, (Calculated – Actual) squared, then add up the totals for the squared Deltas across all comparison points. For a climate model, the comparison points would be the weather station locations, compared to the model ‘grid result’ at that location. The goal, of course, is to get that total difference as low as possible.
Some cells may not have actual station data, but that is not critical to the goodness of fit evaluation; comparison where there is real station data is the key. This type of evaluation would also open up comparisons like Model vs Rural stations, or Model vs Airports, or Model vs all Northern Hemisphere, and even Model versus other Models. If climate modelers have not yet done this, why not? If they have (and I am betting someone has), where are those results published? Seems to me this is (or should be) standard practice for Model evaluation.
SteveE says:
March 8, 2011 at 3:47 am
“I’d expect it to be warmer and as a result I’d expect the averged (sic) value for the whole grid cell to be warmer than the point data for the island.”
Yep Steve, god forbid we should use an actual thermometer reading without playing around with the reading! Please explain to me how you extrapolate to adjacent grid cells and the ones adjacent to them when you have no idea of the local sea or air temperature! Have they been out there and checked the areas in the adjacent cells before to get a figure to work from?
I am not being facetious, this thing still does not sink in for me! In my mind it is pure guess work and that is without a human getting the figure wrong when inputing data or some sensor going tits up!
Dave in Delaware
Grid cell data is not point data and so a direct comparison isn’t an easy thing as this article shows.
If you compare one point on land to a grid cell that include 10’s of square km of ocean you’d expect there to be a difference as the graphs clearly show. The grid cell is an average of the whole area and so won’t reflect the exact value for the point data.
The averaging will remove the small scale hetrogenity in an area like this, however the larger scale picture will still be valid. The key is looking at the scale you are modelling to try and keep the hetrogenity that is important. In this case the tiny island of Jan Mayen isn’t important when trying to model global temperatures.
@Anthony Watts says:
March 8, 2011 at 4:13 am
Thanks Anthony.
The proverbial smoking gun e-mails, yet whitewashed at any inquiry.
The CAGW fanatics will just ignore things like this.
Pointman has a very good comment on “fanatics”
see: http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/some-thoughts-on-fanatics-and-how-to-fight-them/
I’ve located a photo of the weather station, this building appears to be the Meteorological Office:
Note the tall garage doors for filling then release of weather balloons.
Here’s the actual instruments. Note the albedo of the ground cover and the two cinder block heat sinks to keep the step from blowing away in the summer:
More here: http://www.jan-mayen.no/met-stn.htm
I did note that they say: “The Meteorological Station or the “Met” is located 3 km. north of Olonkin City. ” which is a good thing since it gets it away from the mini UHI there.
The weather station(s) of Jan Mayen have quite a colorful history according to Wikipedia, including Nazis, shipwrecks, and volcanoes. It reads like a movie plot:
==========================================================
The League of Nations gave Norway jurisdiction over the island, and in 1921 Norway opened the first meteorological station.[9] The Norwegian Meteorological Institute annexed the island for Norway in 1922. On 27 February 1930, the island was made de jure a part of the Kingdom of Norway.
During World War II, continental Norway was invaded and occupied by Germany in spring 1940. The four man team on Jan Mayen stayed at their posts and in an act of defiance began sending their weather reports to Great Britain instead of Norway. The British codenamed Jan Mayen Island X and attempted to reinforce it with troops to counteract any German attack. The Norwegian gunboat Fridtjof Nansen ran aground on one of the islands’ many uncharted lava reefs and the 68 man crew abandoned ship and joined the Norwegian team on shore. The British expedition commander, prompted by the loss of the gunboat, decided to abandon Jan Mayen until the following spring and radioed for a rescue ship. Within a few days a ship arrived and evacuated the four Norwegians and their would-be reinforcements after demolishing the weather station to prevent it from falling into German hands. The Germans attempted to land a weather team on the island on 16 November 1940. The German naval trawler carrying the team crashed on the rocks just off Jan Mayen after a patrolling British destroyer had picked them up on radar. Most of the crew struggled ashore and were taken prisoner by a landing party from the destroyer.[9]
The Allies returned to the island on 10 March 1941, when the Norwegian ship Veslekari, escorted by the patrol boat Honningsvaag, dropped 12 Norwegian weathermen on the island. The team’s radio transmissions soon betrayed its presence to the Axis, and German planes from Norway began to bomb and strafe Jan Mayen whenever weather would permit it, though they did little damage. Soon supplies and reinforcements arrived and even some antiaircraft guns, giving the island a garrison of a few dozen weathermen and soldiers. By 1941, Germany had given up hope of evicting the Allies from the island and the constant air raids stopped.
On 7 August 1942, a German Focke-Wulf Fw 200 “Condor”, probably on a mission to bomb the station, smashed into the nearby mountainside of Danielsenkrateret in fog, killing all 9 crewmembers.[10] In 1950, the wreck of another German plane with 4 crew members was discovered on the southwest side of the island.[11] In 1943, the Americans established a radio locating station named Atlantic City in the north to try to locate German radio bases in Greenland.
After the war, the meteorological station was located at Atlantic City, but moved in 1949 to a new location. Radio Jan Mayen also served as an important radio station for ship traffic in the Arctic Ocean. In 1959, NATO decided to build the LORAN-C network in the Atlantic Ocean, and one of the transmitters had to be on Jan Mayen. By 1961, the new military installations, including a new airfield, were operational.
For some time, scientists doubted if there could be any activity in the Beerenberg volcano, but in 1970 the volcano erupted, and added another three square kilometres (1.2 sq mi) of land mass to the island during the three to four weeks it lasted. It had more eruptions in 1973 and 1985.
During an eruption, the sea temperature around the island may increase from just above freezing to about 30 degrees Celsius (86°F).
========================================================
Wow, volcanic temperature spikes!
Anthony Watts
Thanks for that Anthony.
As the last paragraph says; “the sea temperature around the island may increase from just above freezing” which is what the average for the modelled data is, +0.3C.
The point data for the island that is covered in snow and ice is unlikely to be representative of the whole grid cell which is modelled composed mostly of ocean.
“There are three kinds of lies. Lies, d*mn lies and statistics”
Benjamin Disraeli