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.
Overwash, coastlines, sedimentation and silt deposits have been greatly influenced by human migration and development, not just climate or tectonics. There is no chance it can be used as a proxy to determine historical weather events.
There is a major difference between an Addendum, which is published to correct an inadvertent error, and a Corrigenda, which indicates deliberate error. For instance, the correction of Mann’s hockey stick was a Corrigenda according to Nature, which stated:
In other words, Mann’s hockey stick was deliberately in error. And now we have the Steig Corrigenda.
Smokey:
You’re always taking things a bridge too far.
does not imply deliberate error, just error.
Corrigenda are for correcting errors, real errors that make a difference to conclusions, not necessarily deliberate errors. Addendums are for additions. That is the distinction.
RunFromMadness (13:11:28) : said
“Overwash, coastlines, sedimentation and silt deposits have been greatly influenced by human migration and development, not just climate or tectonics. There is no chance it can be used as a proxy to determine historical weather events.”
It has been though and many people are believing it.
Tonyb
jeez (13:25:16) :
… if the scientific accuracy or reproducibility of the original paper is compromised.
does not imply deliberate error, just error.
You are right. But:
Using tree ring proxies when warned not to do so;
Giving them 390 times the weightage of other data;
Leaving out the dataset that included the Medieval Warm Period;
Points to deliberate error
Saying that they had included the dataset that they had left out is lying, in my books.
Hiding the missing data in a file labelled “CENSORED_DATA” points to deliberate concealment.
It wasn’t inadvertent. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Richard:
Yes, but Smokey was implying that Nature agreed with his assessment of deliberate errors by use of the term corrigendum, and that Nature was endorsing accusations of Mann’s and Steig’s of deliberate misrepresentation and that is not the case. Whether Mann and/or Steig did or did not deliberately introduce errors is not the relevant to my point. That is a separate issue which I will leave others to address.
jeez,
I’ll defer to your expertise, but the way I had read the definitions in Nature, it stated that an Addendum is done when “authors inadvertently omitted significant information available to them at the time”.
The word ‘inadvertently’ is only found in the definition for an Addendum, not in the definition of Corrigenda. It appears to me that a Corrigenda is much more serious, and that those errors were not due to inadvertent mistakes.
Smokey, it’s a simple as using the English equivalents:
Addition
Correction
Smokey
Nature were the ones who published Mann’s work, including the sifting sands one above. They were part of the cover-up that happened subsequently when attacked by McIntyre and McKitrick.
They refused to reveal the details of the data and methods used by the authors when asked to do so.
They refused to publish McIntyre and McKitrick’s paper criticising the graph.
They went along with Caspar Amman and Eugene Wahl’s hasty post-facto cover-up which claimed to be “independent confirmation” of the hockey stick.
They published a news article headlined “Academy affirms hockey-stick graph”
They are hardly likely to say that Mann was in deliberate error
RunFromMadness (13:11:28) :
“Overwash, coastlines, sedimentation and silt deposits have been greatly influenced by human migration and development, not just climate or tectonics. There is no chance it can be used as a proxy to determine historical weather events.”
Can I add bioturbation to the list? (Non-human post depositional redistribution of soft sediments by all sorts of bugs of all sorts of shapes and doing all sorts of things.)
That shows that the Medieval Warm Period is well recognized in the Climate Scientific Community. Even Mann recognices it.
The MWP is NOT , and never was, a challenge for AGW theory. The MWP and the LIA are fenomena expected given the natural variability (solar radiation, ENSO and NAO cycles, etc). What is not natural is the warming of last decades. There are no solar radiation increase ,no radical shifts in ENSO (like the development of a permanent El Niño) and NAO is re-entering a cool fase in last few years.
How can you explain recent warming, specially in the polar areas, withouth greenhouse + aerosol dimming effects?
commonsense (16:51:28) :
How can you explain recent warming, specially in the polar areas, withouth greenhouse + aerosol dimming effects?
-From the last big el nino, in 1998, there has not been any warming but cooling. Before the 1998 el Nino, in 1991 – 1992 there was a low peak in GCR so low cloud cover decreased, sun heated sea water, and it began losing heat at 1998.(There is no heat you ever feel if it is not being lost from a source).
-There is no such warming in the polar areas!
Wow commonsense, have you got some reading to do ( and maybe some spell checking would help you as well ). The warming of the last decades, as you put it, are well within the bounds of natural variability. You will have a lot of work to do to prove to me that it is not. The MWP has been shown to have been warmer than it is today, thereby putting any recent warming well within the bounds of NATURAL VARIABILITY. The only reason you might think we are outside the bounds of NATURAL VARIABILITY, is if you buy into Michael Mann’s weak proxies, which has certainly made an attempt at removing the MWP and the LIA. It is definitely a challenge to those who believe we are outside the bounds of NATURAL VARIABILITY. Where is your common sense?
TREMENDOUS NEWS!!!!!!
RealClimate announces that ALL “real science” must reveal its original data and make public ALL of its process!!
(Wonder how they let that little statement get by given Hansen’s, Jones’, and Mann’s inability/refusal to do so most of the time …And the Brit’s absolute failure to track, archive, and even SAVE their original weather data.)
From that web site, quoting the following thread:
“Resolving technical issues in science
Filed under: Arctic and Antarctic Climate Science Communicating Climate
Reporting on climate skeptics— group @ur momisugly 14 August 2009
One of the strengths of science is its capacity to resolve controversies by generally accepted procedures and standards. Many scientific questions (especially more technical ones) are not matters of opinion but have a correct answer.
Scientists document their procedures and findings in the peer-reviewed literature in such a way that they can be double-checked and challenged by others. The proper way to challenge results is, of course, also through the peer-reviewed literature, so that the challenge follows the same standards of documentation as did the original finding.”
La Nina might mean more hurricanes or less hurricanes. Same with El Nino. These are all completely consistent with results from GCM models.
“The MWP is NOT , and never was, a challenge for AGW theory.”
Name a model and set of climate forcings and “known” sources of variability/oscillations (What?!? Those exist now?!?) which shows a MWP globally and which was as warm as the present or warmer. Name one.
“given the natural variability (solar radiation, ENSO and NAO cycles, etc).”
Um, you mean those things that models have a great deal of difficulty with? And they can CAUSE warming? Gosh, who knew!
“What is not natural is the warming of last decades.”
Your argument is one from ignorance, but you state it with such confidence-pretty impressive. You basically say “it’s not the sun, or ENSO, or NAO (define “last few years”-you mean the years that there wasn’t any warming in the lower atmosphere, or before 1997?), or anything else I can think of. Must be AGW.”
“There are no solar radiation increase”
Debatable:
Nicola Scafetta and Richard Willson, “ACRIM-gap and Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) trend issue resolved using a surface magnetic flux TSI proxy model”, Geophysical Research Letter 36, L05701, doi:10.1029/2008GL036307 (2009)
(not that it matters that much)
“like the development of a permanent El Niño”
I’d bet you everything I own that if such a thing had occurred recently, rather warming being blamed on that, such a change would be blamed on AGW-I can’t make that bet because it’s a counterfactual, but still.
“How can you explain recent warming, specially in the polar areas, withouth greenhouse + aerosol dimming effects?”
With regard to “especially polar areas” there is a widespread misconception that this is some sort of greenhouse “fingerprint”-it’s NOT. Any source of warming is amplified at the poles, because of the ice albedo feedback. The arguments about water vapor etc. although often made even by people who should no better, are just wrong. But what about that warming, hm? Well, what about the warming of the arctic up to the thirties? Temperatures then were similar to today’s, and in fact a recent paper:
Chylek Petr, Chris K. Folland, Glen Lesins, Manvendra K. Dubeys, and Muyin Wang: 2009: “Arctic air temperature change amplification and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation”. Geophysical Research Letters (in press).
Concluded that, at least during the short instrumental record, the behavior of the Arctic temperatures in relation to global is really odd from the expectations of polar amplification and appears to be modulated by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
More over, when we look at Antarctica, (note that even with recent controversies, the warming that was “found” was mainly in a very early part of the record) changes in the last thirty years or so have been decidedly weak. If polar amplification WERE a necessary fingerprint of AGW, then that would be a problem (which one can attempt to address in a couple of ways)-fortunately for you it isn’t and there is probably a pretty good explanation for that.
Dimming? I have read several studies which claim that in fact the most recent period is one of global brightening so maybe the question you should be asking yourself is “How can you explain recent warming, specially in the polar areas, with greenhouse – aerosol dimming effects?”
And especially at the North Pole, given:
Drew Shindell & Greg Faluvegi, 2009: Climate response to regional radiative forcing during the twentieth century. Nature Geoscience 2, 294 – 300 (2009) Published online: 22 March 2009 | doi:10.1038/ngeo473.
which says:
“During 1976-2007, we estimate that aerosols contributed 1.09 +/- 0.81 C to the observed Arctic surface temperature increase of 1.48 +/- 0.28 C.”
(recent Atlantic warming may have more to do with dust variations, another (this time natural) warming effect of aerosols, which, per above, may also play into Arctic warming:
Foltz, G. R., and M. J. McPhaden, 2008. Trends in Saharan dust and tropical Atlantic climate during 1980-2006. Geophysical Research Letters, 35, L20706, doi:10.1029/2008GL035042.
No comment on the odd construction of yours that dimming “explains” warming!
Seriously though, you can do better than this in making arguments for AGW. I know you can, because “skeptics” Pat Michaels and Robert Balling actually do so almost enough to convince me in Climate of Extremes. Think about it-it has to do with the fact that the characters of recent warming ARE a little bit different than the early twentieth century warming in a way which DOES suggest some human influence (although given the biases in the surface record, how much is “real” greenhouse warming versus land-use etc. is not at all clear to me). There IS Global Warming (although probably less than usually calculated) there is even a (potentially substantial) anthropogenic component to it-BUT the points which matter are 1. The Nature of the Anthropogenic effects 2. The AMOUNT of warming which can be attributed to the various influences 3. And whether such warming is in anyway alarming.
You seem to be defending the claim that most of the latter half of the twentieth century warming was due to CO2 and other greenhouse gases (something IPCC gives 90% probability to). Well, that would indicate you believe that at least 51% of the 50% of the warming that happened since the late seventies (the rates for the warmings from 1911-1941 and 1978-2008 for the (biased) HadCrut surface record are identical) and if the warming of the twentieth century was .8 degrees (which is being exceedingly generous IMAO) that translates into you believe that all the anthropogenic greenhouse gases that have gone up into the atmophere since the late seventies have caused anywhere from .2 to .4 degrees Celsius of warming. Remembering that I wont let you fudge the aerosol numbers to whatever you need, please explain the small warming since the seventies with increasing CO2 and until recently increasing Methane, etc, etc. with a model-and tell me, after you get a good back cast, how much warming you see in the future. if it’s more than about 1.3 degrees, you’ve done something very wrong and will be reprimanded.
Hockey sticks are constructed from several elements. One mentioned thoroughly above is the defective statistical techniques that overweight particular proxies to generate flatness or lower values in the left hand part of the stick.
Another that was also mentioned above by Tim Clark (“The instrumental data includes CAT 2 hurricanes, whereas the resolution of the HurrMannicane sediments is alledgely CAT 3, at only four site”) is the splicing of proxy and instrumental records into a single graph with a misleading or inaccurate result. For temperatures it is the UHI infected instrumental temperature record spliced onto various proxies.
Another example is the CO2 hockey stick which splices modern instrumental CO2 measurements onto heavily smoothed ice code CO2 measurements. There’s a good reason that degassing 4k year old ice yields a sample of CO2 that is about 2k years old. Both the ice and the gas are dated fairly accurately. The difference is that the water and isotopes don’t travel through the ice over time, whereas the CO2 gas does as the ice is being fully solidified over centuries or millennia. The bottom line is that CO2 readings from ice cores are heavily smoothed and inappropriate to be spliced to unsmoothed instrument measurements.
Could the current CO2 spike be natural and ice cores have smoothed such spikes in the past? Probably not natural. The modern CO2 spike matches isotope ratios in fossil fuels. But that is a qualitative match, not quantitative, so the spike is probably mostly man-made but also likely partly natural. But can we be sure that CO2 hasn’t spiked naturally in the past, including the isotope ratios? Bottom line is there are natural mechanisms that could cause spikes (ocean off gassing, major vegetation decreases), but they tend to be slow and can’t explain much of the modern spike. I would say though that it is likely that the modern spike is not unprecedented for interglacial or perhaps even glacier periods (i.e. not a hockey stick)
commonsense (16:51:28) :
That shows that the Medieval Warm Period is well recognized in the Climate Scientific Community. Even Mann recognices it.
The MWP is NOT , and never was, a challenge for AGW theory. The MWP and the LIA are fenomena expected given the natural variability (solar radiation, ENSO and NAO cycles, etc).
===
Er, uhm, ah….politely put: No. Completely false. Utterly and completely false.
From the very beginning, the MWP and LIA threatened the entire premis of today’s ecotheist AGW theory: If the LIA or MWP produced greater long-term cyclic temperature changes over the period 1150 through 2000, and if that long-term cycle is further continuing a short 70 year cycle on top of the 900 year cycle, then today’s short “rise” in temperature between 1975 through 1998 IS well inside natural variation and your radiation-forced AGW warming theory is destroyed.
Quotes from the original climate ecotheists show they need to “remove the MWP” from the record, and they have: The original IPCC reports include both the LIA and the MWP. Later IPCC reports repeatedly insert Mann’sfabrication of the hockey stick instead – specifically because the IPCC’s first graph in their own report proves their own theory is wrong.
Likewise, Hansen’s own GISS has artificially raised the NOAA/NSDC original 1910-1970 RAW temperatures – hiding them with undocumented and unsubstantiated and unverified “corruptions” (er, corrections) specifically because the 20th century’s 70-year short term oscillation proves Hansen’s 1975-1998 rise is both within natural variation, and has been seen many times before.
Tim Clark
Eric (skeptic) (18:45:27) :
Hockey sticks are constructed from several elements. One mentioned thoroughly above is the defective statistical techniques that overweight particular proxies to generate flatness or lower values in the left hand part of the stick.
Another that was also mentioned above by Tim Clark (”The instrumental data includes CAT 2 hurricanes, whereas the resolution of the HurrMannicane sediments is alledgely CAT 3, at only four site”) is the splicing of proxy and instrumental records into a single graph with a misleading or inaccurate result.
—-
Please check me: As I read the excuses and rationalizations of Mann’s (missing) data, I understood that his hurricane landfall proxy data is coming
from ONE site in Massachusetts.
But Mann extends his proxy analysis not only for the “northeaster’s” that strike Mass. from the northeast (winter storms coming south), cold front storms coming from inland from the northwest, and (a VERY, VERY few) hurricane remnants after passing over the Ohio valley, NJ and NY and CT coastal plains, and directly from offshore still making storm floods.
Well, if so, then Mann’s proxy data – for his Mass site – will find dozens of large northeaster and winter storm debris and rain-induced floods from upstate and inland “regular” winter and summer floods, especially compared to so few true large hurricanes actually making landfall in New England.
Further, Mann then assumes that these miscellaneous and varied storm landfalls in from a single site in coastal New England can be used to tell us how many “hurricanes” strike the FL Gulf Coast, Texas coast, Louisiana and Alabama coasts, and the southeast’s Atlantic coasts.
Would it not be important to establish how Mann got a “robust” way to very that a rocky New Coast will deposit storm debris and mud in layers the same way that true hurricanes deposit mud and debris in flat Louisiana swamps and grass-covered sandy Florida beachs?
commonsense (16:51:28) :
That shows that the Medieval Warm Period is well recognized in the Climate Scientific Community. Even Mann recognices it.
Of course he does. That’s why he manipulated and fiddled the data and lied to remove it.
The MWP is NOT , and never was, a challenge for AGW theory.
Tell me another! If that is so why go through all that trouble to remove it?
How can you explain recent warming, specially in the polar areas, withouth greenhouse + aerosol dimming effects?
Must be one of the worlds many mysteries just like the MWP. Or maybe it is just like “The MWP and the LIA .. fenomena expected given the natural variability”.
Maybe Mann should spend his time trying to explain that rather than trying to fiddle the records to remove it.
The GISP2 ice core data clearly shows that Greenland (polar areas), at least, was warmer than today during the MWP. Wonder why that was so?
Actually no. Fossil fuels don’t cause much rise in atmospheric CO2. Most, over 95%, of the recent rise of the past few decades is wholly due to natural sources.
Unless you believe in the IPCC model in whose mythical world CO2 magically persists in the atmosphere for a thousand years contrary to the basic laws of physics and chemistry, and recently repeated by Salamon et al 2009.
What balderdash.
Observation, measurement, and analysis of the real world over the last fifty years shows that bulk CO2 persists in the atmosphere for only a few years and this is confirmed by isotopic analysis because of the slightly different rates at which the isotopes are adsorbed.
Contrary to IPCC assertions the isotope emission is largely meaningless because much of the CO2 released by natural sources is also very old, just like that in fossil fuels.
It is the adsorbtion rates not emission rates that are important in assessing the effect of burning fossil fuel. The latest paper on this is Essenhigh but there have been many previous ones.
Kindest Regards
Jeez – I’ve never seen so many good one-liners as these responses!
Ana now a named storm – this was the TD that petered out and was even dropped from the list on Thursday and Friday.
Now, Saturday morning at 0600 Eastern time, it’s back a storm. Odd.
Look at the CO2 levels on a weekly or daily level: You can the large !!! up and down swing as NH plants absorb CO2 in the spring and release it each fall-winter.
IF the AGW ecotheists’ theory of long-term CO2 deposits (or half-life) was true, then no such up and down swing could be detected.
Or do they pretend that it is only man-released CO2 that is kept untouched in the atmosphere for thousand years, but nature’s CO2 is changed out every 6 months?
David Ball (08:55:24): “To me, that is the real story for journalists; how this scam was so effective and all encompassing.”
Read this link from MartinGAtkins (06:50:31) for a clue, David: Global Warming, a Mass Mania
Roger Carr & Martin Atkins,
Thanks for linking to that excellent article.
Masters warned that TD might reorganize itself, and it did. Storms apparently dying and turning serious instead isn’t all that odd, really. Look what Ivan did several years ago: clobbered the Florida panhandle, chewed its weay North and then East, and then looped back to hit Central Florida at (IIRC) tropical storm strength.
Re BBC
Slightly off thread but the BBC Blog of Bloom that was showing dangerous sceptical tendencies has had no new postings for over two weeks with no explanation.
In addition to Material World you might want to “listen again” to Home Planet for more BBC AGW junk.
Regards
Paul