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.
…
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.”
…
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.
…
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.
Mann is in danger of becoming the running gag of GW controversy.
First he says there was no medeaval warming period, whereas overwhelming evidence says there was. Then he says Antarctica was warming over the last 50 years, whereas every other investigation, including those by researchers with an interest in the GW religion, told us it was not, actually became colder. And now the hurricanes are at an all time high, when researcher who actually know about these things say the opposite.
It’s obvious to me: his algorithms are flawed and they have a sign error somewhere.
The real question to me is, however: is it of any interest to the rest of the world to find out where and why he makes his mistakes? I think not, I find that totally uninteresting. So, next time, when Mann delivers his next exploits, I expect a report on this blog under the title:
“Mann farts again”
NS (22:55:57) :
The BBC tell a very different story on their actual radio broadcasts. No uncertainty there. They even added some stuff about a “a new report the bbc have seen”. It is beneath contempt.
They sure do. This paper was also given air time on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Material World’ yesterday. For what it’s worth, I’ve e-mailed the programme, giving a brief synopsis of Chris Landsea’s involvement and postings. I don’t expect much to occur as a result, but one can always hope…
Cheers
Mark
Mann is probably reading this article about himself and is working on a ‘new proxy’ for us.
The Pine Island glacier pics come from day 71 (2003) and day 74 (2009), so,
– same time of the year,
– at the very end of Antartic summer when there will be a minimum of sea ice and snow so it is the best satellite pic of the just/(mostly) glacial ice only. (It looks like there is still some sea ice off-shore in the 2009 picture).
Regarding:
Tim Clark (13:52:52) :
What was the worldwide spacial distribution of these cores? Oh, sorry, no data provided.
and:
Jeff Id (14:19:52) :
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/
The actual sediment data is not available, only the techniques and locations.
This is the first reviewers criticism from the link Jeff provided:
Assertion #1: The merging together of the more recent instrumental tropical cyclone data with the proxy hurricane strike observations is not appropriate, since the sediment overwash deposits are generally recording direct major hurricane strikes. To attempt to infer basin-wide statistics from major hurricane strikes at four sites is not appropriate.
The instrumental data includes CAT 2 hurricanes, whereas the resolution of the HurrMannicane sediments is alledgely CAT 3, at only four sites. I concur with the asserted criticisms.
Oh – I just realized where the photo at the top came from. I’ve seen the original before, somehow it didn’t register with me your photo had been improved over that one at http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/
Bill Illis
Thanks for that. I normally trust your posts implicitly but if I wanted to complain to the BBC I needed to make sure of my (non melting) ground.
The BBC report was unbelievable in its bias and misinformation and follows hard on the heels of an ever more imaginative series of scare stories from them.
Tonyb
Oh, there are some storms in the queue right now. And it’s still relatively early in the season.
Always dicey, predicting which storms are going to become hurricanes, and then predicting which hurricanes will actually make landfall, and then figuring out where they’re going to land.
Always. I think in this one instance, “always” fits just fine.
Bil Illis
Another poster on another thread obtained this information.
“The Pine Island glacier:
-mean temperature -30 C
-snow accumulation 1m/year
-thinning(in a location at 55 km upstream of the grounding line):
1991-2001 1m/year
2003-2006 1.5m/year
2006-2007 2.5m/year
2007-2008 3.5m/year
Speed: 2075 m/year
Speed increase:6%/year
Mass loss:46 GT/year.
Source:Scott&Gudmundsson .”
The BBC are presumably referring to this report 55km upstream but showed photos of it melting as it entered the sea contrary to the official data. How a glacier can be melting at these sorts of temperatures seems strange as there is no warmer sea involved here which can melt from underneath.
tonyb
Ozzie John (04:34:21) :
It seems a shame to chop all those tree down in search of proxy data. What to do with all this timber ?
For winter time…ya know, one thing is to lie another to suffer cold.
How any scientist can speak positively of Mann and his work amazes me; it tells you all you need to know about that scientist.
I would suggest him a better proxie: Get an andean Llama, slaughter it by opening its chest, take its heart out, still beating , raise it to dedicate it to the sun above, then look at it, that will give you the best forescast of climate for the next year.
(note.-This is actually performed -SH winter solstice-, every year on june 24th., at the Intiraymi holyday, at Cusco, Peru, South America.)
Thank you Roger Carr !! It is apparent the world is waking up from this Gore induced fantasy. Their foundations are crumbling. Even some journalists are asking the hard questions. To me, that is the real story for journalists; how this scam was so effective and all encompassing.
I would like to see the authors of this research review Mann’s work:
Appl Opt Nyberg J, Malmgren B, Winter A, Jury MR, Kilbourne KH,Quinn TM (2007) Low Atlantic hurricane activity in the 1970s and 1980s compared to the past 270 years. Nature 447(7145): 698.
“Hurricane activity in the North Atlantic Ocean has increased significantly since 1995 (refs 1, 2). This trend has been attributed to both anthropogenically induced climate change3 and natural variability1, but the primary cause remains uncertain. Changes in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes in the past can provide insights into the factors that influence hurricane activity, but reliable observations of hurricane activity in the North Atlantic only cover the past few decades2. Here we construct a record of the frequency of major Atlantic hurricanes over the past 270 years using proxy records of vertical wind shear and sea surface temperature (the main controls on the formation of major hurricanes in this region1, 3, 4, 5) from corals and a marine sediment core. The record indicates that the average frequency of major hurricanes decreased gradually from the 1760s until the early 1990s, reaching anomalously low values during the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, the phase of enhanced hurricane activity since 1995 is not unusual compared to other periods of high hurricane activity in the record and thus appears to represent a recovery to normal hurricane activity, rather than a direct response to increasing sea surface temperature. Comparison of the record with a reconstruction of vertical wind shear indicates that variability in this parameter primarily controlled the frequency of major hurricanes in the Atlantic over the past 270 years, suggesting that changes in the magnitude of vertical wind shear will have a significant influence on future hurricane activity.”
“Has anyone else noticed that Michael Mann now looks very like Kane [snip] in the Command and Conquer computer game series ?”
Posing with his new vortex weapon.
David Ball (08:55:24) :
Thank you Roger Carr !! It is apparent the world is waking up from this Gore induced fantasy. Their foundations are crumbling
Crumbling?, are you sure?. There several changes ahead, like an “educational reform” which lowers markedly its level by creating new courses as “social personnel”(which includes in one:geography, a digest resume of history-enough to erase any national sentiment- and economy), then the subject called “communication” (including a very simplified language course, literature,etc), a very suscint course on mathematics, called “logical-mathematics” and “sciences”, including in it all sciences, from anatomy to physics and chemistry.
All this is intended for a population expected only to serve their Masters, for the new “Gammas” of this “Brave New World”.
Al this has been already implemented in several countries following the model proposed by the UN world governmental offices.
The WUWT saga will have to reach other areas menaced by this world movement which not only comprises climate issues but the future of all humanity.
If any of you visit the UNESCO web site you’ll feel aghast.
http://www.unesco.org/en/education
Absolutely Off Topic:
Paleontology is becoming extinct
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/55888/
Could we help it?
Mark T (21:43:15) : You should read Pat Michaels and Robert Balling’s Climate of Extremes-they have a whole chapter on publication bias, peer review, etc. which pretty well documents that the system is broken (for one thing, people can choose who reviews their work and who can’t, pretty much).
Chuck (09:56:28) : “I’m convinced that because of the great influence that MBH98 had on the global warming debate, including the prominent usage in the IPCC reports, that Dr. Mann was elevated to an upper rung of social status amongst his peers. Once such status is achieved, it is nearly impossible to lose it. It doesn’t matter that the Hockey Stick was shown not to be correct or that he refuses to publish his data or statistical methods. Any work he produces is treated with greater reverence than it would otherwise deserve and his supporters are unwavering.
For those of us who care most about the science and not so much about social status, such reverence seems completely unjustified but it’s not hard to find examples of this sort of social worshipping in all walks of life.
Once you have a high social status, you can get away with all sorts of behavior that you couldn’t otherwise. It will take something major to knock him off his high rung on the social ladder.”
Richard Lindzen has noted this phenomenon, and calls it “Opportunism of the weak”:
“Here, scientists whose work would
normally be regarded as weak and unimpressive, gain note by molding their results to the needs
of the alarmists in the environmental movement. This, normally, might be of little consequence
to more productive scientists. However, with the support of the environmental movement, such
weak opportunists can gain unwarranted authority. The examples are well known and include
the infamous ‘hockey stick,’ as well as the iconic statements of the IPCC.”
Read it all, it’s rather pertinent:
http://www.heartland.org/events/WashingtonDC09/PDFs/Lindzen.pdf
Lance (10:36:26) :
I broke my hockey stick last winter during hockey season. He can use it for Carbon dating….
How does this guy manage to get so much coverage!!
An excellent publicist and the interest of financiers of his latest “study.”
Nogw (09:51:24) :
The WUWT saga will have to reach other areas menaced by this world movement which not only comprises climate issues but the future of all humanity.
If any of you visit the UNESCO web site you’ll feel aghast.
http://www.unesco.org/en/education
On the contrary. Nothing appears terribly unreasonable except perhaps their climate program. More important is a commitment to balanced views of education that reflect a cross section of the human mindset – and not just the views of the UN.
PLEASE: No more photos of Michael Mann in the future. I usually am eating breakfast when I read your blog, and I find looking at Mann causes me to become nauseous.
Nature censored my post on “McIntyre versus Jones: climate data row escalates” so I am reproducing it here.
True science is spread and enhanced by criticism and argument. The data which is the basis of AGW hypothesis should be open to review and transparent. Saying that “Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”, doesnt exactly engender confidence.
Jones has published some papers with Mann of hockey stick fame. To remind readers the “hockey stick” did away with the Medieval Warm period and Little Ice Age and replaced it with a dead steady line with runaway warming in the last 30 years. It was the smoking gun of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
The Medieval warm period happened without the help of Anthropogenic CO2. If that happened quite naturally it could well be asked why todays warming is in anyway unusual or alarming or indeed if it would continue or enter another cold period.
The authors of the graph had used the varying widths of tree-rings as THEIR PRINCIPAL METHOD of estimating early-climate temperatures.
THE IPCC HAD, prior to this, WARNED AGAINST USING TREE-RINGS AS PROXIES for pre-instrumental surface temperatures as they were prone to be inaccurate.
They none-the-less used them and gave them 390 TIMES AS MUCH WEIGHT AS ANY OF THE OTHER DATA THEY USED
Not only did the authors of the “hockey stick” use temperature proxies that the IPCC had said should not be used; not only did they give these questionable proxies 390 times more weight than other data; but they ALSO LEFT OUT THE TREE-RING DATASET THAT INCLUDED THE MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD ITSELF!
Then the graph’s authors said in the scientific paper that accompanied their graph THAT THEY HAD INCLUDED THE TREE-RING DATASET FOR THE MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD THAT THEY HAD IN FACT OMITTED!
The graph’s authors inserted their own “estimates” in place of the data they had left out, BUT DID NOT PUBLISH THE FACT THAT THEY HAD DONE SO.
Worse, THEY HID THE MISSING DATA IN A FILE ON THEIR OWN COMPUTER that they revealingly labeled “CENSORED_DATA”.
When McIntyre and McKitrick obtained from the authors of the “hockey stick” the computer program they had used in compiling the graph, they found it PRODUCED A “HOCKEY STICK” EVEN WHEN THEY USED RANDOM DATA FROM A TELEPHONE BOOK!
Geophysical Research Letters finally published a paper by McIntyre & McKitrick exposing the defects in the graph (McIntyre & McKitrick, 2005).
“This paper provoked astonishment and dismay throughout the climatological community. That was the first moment at which many honest scientists who had previously accepted the climate scare at face value began to question the methods and the motives of the handful of politicized scientists.”
Three statisticians were engaged by the US House of Representatives (Wegman et al., 2005) to examine the evidence on both sides.
In a damning report, the statisticians confirmed all of the findings of McIntyre and McKitrick to the effect that the graph was defective.
The statisticians also found that a suspicious collection of subsequent papers that had suddenly appeared supporting the assertion that the medieval warm period had not existed.
They found that these had nearly all been written by associates or co-authors of the inventors of the defective graph, and using similarly questionable data and methods!
In the July 2005 hearing, Edward Wegman, a George Mason University statistician, testified on behalf of the mathematicians who reviewed the Mann papers. “The controversy of the [Mann] methods lies in that the proxies are incorrectly centered on the mean of the period 1902-1995, rather than on the whole time period.” He explained that these statistical procedures were capable of incorrectly creating a hockey stick shaped graph.
Gerald North, chair of the National Research Council committee, testified at the hearing that he agreed with Wegman’s statistical criticisms, but said that those considerations “did not alter the substance of Mann’s findings”! (How on Earth is that possible?)
North said that large scale surface temperature reconstructions “are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities.” Effectively bailing out Mann.
However in the detailed 155 page report of the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council Report, which was also chaired by Gerald North, said differently.
They accepted McIntyre & McKitrick’s argument that Mann’s method is biased towards producing hockey stick-shaped PCs
That uncertainties had been underestimated
That the bristlecone data, on which the famous hockey stick shape depends, should not have been used.
THEY ALSO EXPRESSED VERY LITTLE CONFIDENCE IN THE IPCC’S CLAIM ABOUT THE 1990S BEING THE WARMEST DECADE IN THE MILLENNIUM.
“The substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming.”
“Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium” because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales.”
However just before this they also slipped in that “..the committee finds it PLAUSIBLE that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium.”
This enabled Nature, who first published Mann’s work to say in a headline “Academy affirms hockey-stick graph”! and every other tabloid jumped in.
Shame on you Nature!