Just when you think it couldn’t get any more bizarre in Mann-world, out comes a new paper in Nature hawking hurricane frequency by proxy analysis. I guess Dr. Mann missed seeing the work of National Hurricane Center’s lead scientist, Chris Landsea which we highlighted a couple of days ago on WUWT: NOAA: More tropical storms counted due to better observational tools, wider reporting. Greenhouse warming not involved.
Mann is using “overwash” silt and sand as his new proxy. Chris Landsea disagrees in the Houston Chronicle interview saying: “The paper comes to very erroneous conclusions because of using improper data and illogical techniques,”
From the BBC and the Houston Chronicle, some excerpts are below.
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From the BBC, full story here
Study leader Michael Mann from Penn State University believes that while not providing a definitive answer, this work does add a useful piece to the puzzle.
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 The levels we’re seeing at the moment are within the bounds of uncertainty.  Julian Heming, UK Met Office
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“It’s been hotly debated, and various teams using different computer models have come up with different answers,” he told BBC News.
“I would argue that this study presents some useful palaeoclimatic data points.”
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From the Houston Chronicle, full story here
One tack is based on the observation that the powerful storm surge of large hurricanes deposits distinct layers of sediment in coastal lakes and marshes. By taking cores of sediments at the bottom of these lakes, which span centuries, scientists believe they can tell when large hurricanes made landfall at a particular location.
The second method used a computer model to simulate storm counts based upon historical Atlantic sea surface temperatures, El Niños and other climate factors.
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The two independent estimates of historical storm activity were consistent, said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, the paper’s lead author. Both, for example, pinpointed a period of high activity between 900 and 1100.
“This tells us these reconstructions are very likely meaningful,” he [Mann] said.
UPDATE:
What is funny is that with that quote above, Mann is referring to the Medieval Warm Period, something he tried to smooth out in his tree ring study and previous hockey stick graph.
Now he uses the MWP to his advantage to bolster his current proxy.
Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit writes about “check kiting” related to this study:
The Supplementary Information sheds no light on the methodology or the proxies.
The Supplementary Information contained no data sets. The proxies used for the Mann et al submission are not even listed.
The edifice is built on the SST and Nino3 reconstructions, both of which are references to the enigmatic reference 17, which turns out to be an unpublished submission of Mann et al.
17. Mann, M. E. et al. Global signatures of the Little Ice Age and the medieval climate anomaly and plausible dynamical origins. Science (submitted).
At the time that Nature published this article, there was precisely NO information available on what proxies were used in the reconstruction of Atlantic SST or El Nino or how these reconstructions were done. Did any of the Nature reviewers ask to see the other Mann submission? I doubt it. I wonder if it uses Graybill bristlecone pines.
All your hockey sticks are belong to us:
El Niño (ENSO) and African Monsoon Have Strongly Influenced Intense Hurricane Frequency in the Past
“the work by Donnelly and Woodruff suggests that El Niño and the West African monsoon appear to be critical factors for determining long-term cycles of hurricane intensity in the Atlantic.”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=32816
I can just picture a tree saying “Here I am! Rock you like a Hurricane!”
And of course Mann speaks Entish, while the rest of us are illiterate boobs.
Nature is a joke. In terms of rigor and believability it can no longer be considered top tier, it’s still a splashy pop-science leader however. The sick thing is I would still love to publish in Nature because it makes my future job prospects better. What a sick rat race, I am becoming increasingly embarrassed to be a scientist.
Michael Milken: Junk Bond King.
Michael Mann: Junk Science King.
Well, if the shoe fits…
Chris Landsea disagrees in the Houston Chronicle interview saying: “The paper comes to very erroneous conclusions because of using improper data and illogical techniques,”
In other words Landsea is pointing out that Mann, once again, is doing what Mann does….. produce garbage and attempt to call it science.
Tea leaves? No tarot cards are MUCH MUCH better. It’s the pretty pictures you know, whereas tea leaves are rather vague.
Kindest Regards
Antonio San (11:37:40) :
Overweighting the MA data would be a faux pas on the level of overweighting bristlecone pine data. Nor’easters, very definitely extratropical storms, may result in more damage to the northeastern coast than hurricanes. One in 1962 cut Long Beach Island NJ into three pieces. It destroyed my grandparents’ summer house which had survived several hurricanes. The Blizzard of 1978 washed away 30 feet of outer Cape Cod shoreline – in an area of high dunes. That single storm exceeded the average erosion for a year, maybe a decade.
Being extratropical, they are broader than hurricanes, and any overwash deposits are more likely from a nor’easter than a hurricane. There may be ways to distinguish them, e.g. the area affected, but unless that procedure is explicitly described and effective, then I’d consider the MA data very suspect.
“The edifice is built on the SST and Nino3 reconstructions, both of which are references to the enigmatic reference 17, which turns out to be an unpublished submission of Mann et al.”
The mann has a hide of a rhinocerous!
I would have thought after his first expose he should have disappeared with his tail between his legs.
Quite unrepentant, after reading tree rings in bristlecone pines, he now comes out with patterns in the sifting sands. What will be next? Tea leaves?
Would not the MWP have caused sea level to rise and possibly flood the lakes every time there was a high tide?
Slightly OT but just want to report that amidst all this global warming danger, the arctic north of 80 (see DMI chart in sidebar above) plunged below the long term average again and then below freezing over this week. Currently at Nunavut Canada it is -2C in freezing fog. The forecast for the next few days is for +1 to 2C highs and lows just below freezing:
http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/71082.html
The ice extent curve could begin to flatten a bit early (seems to be doing that already). Meanwhile, I have to admit that summer has finally arrived in Ottawa with temps 28 to 30C (82-86F).
What if there are no hurricanes this season?… which seems possible.
Awesome responses. Well done all!
Wow, Mann has a striking resemblance to Gavin Schmidt.
The Mann NINO3 reconstruction runs from 1650 to 1980. Data here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ei/ei_data/ninocold-recon.dat
Did he splice the newer data to it? That should be unique.
I used the Mann NINO3 data in a post on low frequency ENSO variability here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/low-frequency-enso-oscillations.html
I blogged about this yesterday after I heard a story on NPR.
http://iamyouasheisme.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/paleo_hurricanes/
The argument was so confused, I wasn’t sure if it was the reporter’s fault or if the scientists were just totally sloppy.
“What is funny is that with that quote above, Mann is referring to the Medieval Warm Period, something he tried to smooth out in his tree ring study and previous hockey stick graph.”
EXCELLENT point Anthony. I laughed out loud when I read it.
” I guess Dr. Mann missed seeing the work of National Hurricane Center’s lead scientist, Chris Landsea”
…or maybe he got wind of it (pun intended) beforehand and came up with this crazy hurricane proxy idea to counter it. Yeah, I know it sounds crazy but I don’t have much trust in this guy’s work.
It is indeed funny that Mann now seems to be acknowledging that there was a Medieval Warm Period with the high storm activity between 900 and 1100. Not only that, since this study concerns tropical Atlantic hurricanes, apparently if there was a MWP, it wasn’t just a localized European event — something catastrophic AGW believers always try to say to explain away the MWP.
But, it’s peer reviewed, thus it must be true.
From Roger Pielke Jr. today, I respectfully submit the quintessential quote of the week-
“If Michael Mann did not exist, the skeptics would have to invent him.”
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/08/mann-et-al-unsmoothed-landsea07.html
Mann seems to have a knack for consistently publishing shlock science in the most respected journals and magazines. Its really appalling.
re Keith- you say “It is indeed funny that Mann now seems to be acknowledging that there was a Medieval Warm Period with the high storm activity between 900 and 1100.”
There is another interpretation of Mann’s ‘ground-breaking’ study. He has definitively shown that hurricane activity is not even weakly affected by temperature, according to Mann’s version of proxy-based global temperatures where the MWP vanished. The AGW community should be joyous with relief about this observation. Heh, heh.
One tack is based on the observation that the powerful storm surge of large hurricanes deposits distinct layers of sediment in coastal lakes and marshes. By taking cores of sediments at the bottom of these lakes, which span centuries, scientists believe they can tell when large hurricanes made landfall at a particular location.
What was the worldwide spacial distribution of these cores? Oh, sorry, no data provided.
“I would argue that this study presents some useful palaeoclimatic data points.”
If by palaeoclimatic data he means old hot air, Mann has given the world too much already.
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Hey… that looks like a graph of the number of AGW skeptics.
Chuck (09:56:28) :
It will take something major to knock him off his high rung on the social ladder.
I can think of the ideal piece of winter sports equipment for the job.
“Hurricanes in the Atlantic are more frequent than at any time in the last 1,000 years”
Tell that to the Spanish explorers.
Mann has apparently put all data and code on line beating Dr Steig who still has not released the code by seven months.
http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Nature09/
There is a link titled responses to potential misconceptions at the bottom of the page which appears to address the referees concerns.