Keith Briffa has just published a new paper using the Yamal-Urals regional chronology data, something long sought after via FOIA requests. That data was withheld, citing it wasn’t cooked done with yet, and that releasing it would damage the reputation of CRU scientists.
After Climategate in 2009, I’m not sure how CRU’s reputation could be damaged any further, but that was the reason given for not sharing the data. Maybe it has to do with the lack of definitive hockey stick and the dwarfing of the present by the Medieval Warm period being counter to some of the unsupportable claims that have been made about tree ring data and unprecedented warming.
Steve McIntyre writes:
In resisting the FOI, CRU said that production of the 2006 regional chronology would damage the reputation of CRU scientists. The 2006 version appears to be the “Urals raw” chronology illustrated in SM9 as Greater Urals (shown below), though it is not identified as such in my first reading. Readers can judge for themselves whether their foreboding was justified.
Read his entire essay here: Briffa 2013
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Compare Yamal with solar activity: http://www.leif.org/research/Yamal-and-Solar-Activity.png
There was a program on NPR this morning with a professor
from a Pennsylvania University where the students are
instructed to plagiarize, I wonder if Briffa and Mann took
that course.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 26, 2013 at 10:00 am
Compare Yamal with solar activity
Leif, help me on the above, what solar activity do you post there? TSI reconstruction?, sun spots? proxy?
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 26, 2013 at 10:00 am
“Compare Yamal with solar activity…”
Yes, no obvious connection between differing levels of solar activity and tree growth.
Strangely Briffa seems to think that there is a direct link between tree growth and temperature!
Maybe I’m just seeing things, but to me the Oort (low perhaps too early), Wolf, Spoerer, Maunder & Dalton Minima show up in this proxy data set. Possibly they did to Briffa, too, in which case they were not to see the light of day until dragged kicking & screaming years late from his files.
Lars P. says:
May 26, 2013 at 10:39 am
Leif, help me on the above, what solar activity do you post there? TSI reconstruction?, sun spots? proxy?
since traditional wisdom has it that all solar indices correlate on the time scale of the Figure, it doesn’t really matter which is shown, But specifically, it is a TSI reconstruction derived from the cosmic ray intensity measured in ice cores.
John Tillman says:
May 26, 2013 at 10:42 am
Maybe I’m just seeing things, but to me the Oort (low perhaps too early), Wolf, Spoerer, Maunder & Dalton Minima show up in this proxy data set.
Yes, you are seeing what you want to see. There are enough spikes to go around for wiggle matching to just about anything.
Once trust is broken, it is very difficult to rebuild. It is going to take more than one much delayed attempt at honesty and openness to rebuild the trust that an honest and honorable Scientist would have long since earned. Are we really sure their current release of data is not itself “adjusted” beyond contact with reality? At this point, I am unwilling to trust anything they say, write, or do.
lsvalgaard says:
May 26, 2013 at 10:57 am
There are enough spikes to go around for wiggle matching to just about anything.
___________________
Indeed, but matchmakers abound.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 26, 2013 at 10:00 am
Compare Yamal with solar activity:
____________________________________
I don’t see anything there but that does not mean nothing is there. Comparing a smoothed graph with spaghetti where you don’t clearly see where the mean is isn’t very effective. So while I am willing to agree that there’s no correlation, I still would like to see some more thorough analysis.
Taking into account that the poor Yamal larches are able to grow only from June 16 to July 30 and even then they can be damaged by frosts, it is a very specific proxy to be wiggle-matched to the global yearly temperature.
Kasuha says:
May 26, 2013 at 11:25 am
So while I am willing to agree that there’s no correlation, I still would like to see some more thorough analysis.
In discussions elsewhere I have come across the ‘argument’ that if a dataset does not show the ‘expected’, obvious [‘it’s the Sun, stupid’] solar correlation, there must be something wrong with the data…
I continue to be amazed that they are still attempting to use these useless dendro proxies at all. From my perspective I would have thought a final fork had been stuck in them with the appearance of this work
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/13/surprise-leaves-maintain-temperature-new-findings-may-put-dendroclimatology-as-metric-of-past-temperature-into-question/
If a tree’s foliage, where all the photosynthesis that builds the tree’s structure, is not at ambient temperature what possible physical mechanism could exist that would allow a tree to encode a precise signal of ambient temperature behavior. That is a question I’ve posed in comments here quite a number of times over the last five years without ever getting an adequate response, or any response at all actually.
Tree rings might be a proxy for moisture or growing season length rather than temperature directly.
From Luther Wu on May 26, 2013 at 11:16 am:
Greg Goodman will be around soon enough. He loves showing off his mastery of tools suitable for signal processing, which is perfectly fine and dandy since from the climate to the sun it’s all just collections of frequencies of (practically?) fixed periodicity. He’ll easily find the repeating signals in Briffa’s tree ring data, no problem.
milodonharlani says:
May 26, 2013 at 11:44 am
Tree rings might be a proxy for moisture or growing season length rather than temperature directly.
Wouldn’t a warmer climate have a longer growing season?
If I were to look at that graph with the expectation that it represents “global temperature” (as meaningless as that is), I would say there is nothing unusual happening. nothing happening now that hasn’t happened before on the same scale and rate of change.
So… what’s the point of the paper?
Wouldn’t a warmer climate have a longer growing season?…
====
Trees can only tell you when it was just right….the tree bears
lsvalgaard says:
May 26, 2013 at 11:46 am
milodonharlani says:
May 26, 2013 at 11:44 am
Tree rings might be a proxy for moisture or growing season length rather than temperature directly.
Wouldn’t a warmer climate have a longer growing season?
——————————————————————————–
One would think so, unless the greater warmth were concentrated in the winter, when most plants would be dormant, anyway, without materially affecting the other seasons.
Official Announcement to the Proles of Oceania:
“He who controls the present, controls the past.
He who controls the past, controls the future.” [1]
Some question the need for annual revisions to our past fictions. The Insoc Council for Sociopathic Science [2] has deemed these corrections mandatory, so that our trusted science can continue to expand New Think as our best protection against Eurasia….and world destruction from your CO2 ladened breath.
[1] 1984 by George Orwell
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insoc
For anyone who might be interested, here is the paper referenced in the WUWT post I linked above
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/earth/pdf/nature07031.pdf
The poet’s on sabbatical
from ol’ State U of P
could no’ see the forest
for YAD 063
The match (or lack thereof) between Leif’s solar and the chronology plot might be better seen here:
http://statpad.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/solar_and_chronology.jpg
It does not look that great from about 1000 to 2000.
Forgot to include this money quote from the above
“The oxygen isotope ratio (d18O) of cellulose is thought to provide a record of ambient temperature and relative humidity during periods of carbon assimilation1,2. Here we introduce a method to resolve tree-canopy leaf temperature with the use of d18O of cellulose in 39 tree species. We show a remarkably constant leaf temperature of 21.4+/-2.26C across 50 degrees of latitude, from subtropical to boreal biomes. This means that when carbon assimilation is maximal, the physiological and morphological properties of tree branches serve to raise leaf temperature above air temperature to a much greater extent in more northern latitudes. A main assumption underlying the use of d18O to reconstruct climate history is that the temperature and relative humidity of an actively photosynthesizing leaf are the same as those of the surrounding air3,4
.
Our data are contrary to that assumption and show that plant physiological ecology must be considered when reconstructing climate through isotope analysis. Furthermore, our results may
explain why climate has only a modest effect on leaf economic traits5 in general.”
Dave Wendt
I think most of us on this site have been-and remain-completely baffled as to why tree rings are considered a good proxy for temperature. This branch of science (pun intended) has been wildly over promoted as to its importance over the last 15 years or so.
tonyb
how is he then a poet
when science is his role
called himself a laureate
’til busted by some troll
’tis “debate averse” not “made a verse”
that made some poor wag label
poetic license as his tool
“The Hockey Stick” his fable.