Circling Yamal 3 – facing the thermometers
Guest post by Lucy Skywalker
Let’s look closely and compare local thermometer records (GISS) with the Twelve Trees, upon whose treerings depend all the IPCC claims of “unprecedented recent temperature rise”.
For my earlier Yamal work, see here and here. For the original Hockey Stick story, see here and here.
Half the Hockey Stick graphs depend on bristlecone pine temperature proxies, whose worthlessness has already been exposed. They were kept because the other HS graphs, which depend on Briffa’s Yamal larch treering series, could not be disproved. We now find that Briffa calibrated centuries of temperature records on the strength of 12 trees and one rogue outlier in particular. Such a small sample is scandalous; the non-release of this information for 9 years is scandalous; the use of this undisclosed data as crucial evidence for several more official HS graphs is scandalous. And not properly comparing treering evidence with local thermometers is the mother of all scandals.
I checked out the NASA GISS page for all thermometer records in the vicinity of Yamal and the Polar Urals, in “raw”, “combined”, and “homogenized” varieties. Here are their locations (white). The Siberian larch treering samples in question come from Yamal and Taimyr. Salehard and Dudinka have populations of around 20,000; Pecora around 50,000; Surgut around 100,000; all the rest are officially “rural” sites. Some are long records, some are short.
Russia has two problems. First, many records stopped or became interrupted around 1990 after the ending of Soviet Russia; worst affected are the very telling Arctic Ocean records. Second, during Soviet Russia (and possibly now for all I know), winter urban records were “adjusted” downwards so that the towns could claim more heating allowances. Nevertheless, it will become clear that these issues in no way impede the evidence regarding treerings.
Click to enlarge these graphs. The first shows the 20 GISS stations closest to Yamal and the Polar Urals. The second shows treering width changes over time (only 10 of the 12 trees here). This was supposedly compared with local thermometer records, and used to calibrate earlier treering widths as temperature measurements to create a 1000-year temperature record. It was a pig to turn these graphs into a stack of transparent lines at the same scale as the GISS records for comparison, but finally, interesting material started to emerge.
I scaled all the GISS thermometer records to the same temperature scale, and ran them all from 1880 to 2020 at the same time scale (GISS graphs do not do this). I overlaid them as transparent lines along their approximate mean temperatures for comparison. Mean temperatures (visually judged) vary from around -2ºC (Pecora) to -13ºC (Selagoncy, Olenek, Hatanga, and Ostrov Uedine) and even -15ºC (“Gmo Im E.K. F”). The calibrations are degrees Centigrade anomaly, and decades.
Ha! Straightway we see clear patterns emerging. Let’s agree them:
Thermometer records: (1) time-wise, thermometers show temperatures rising from 1880 to 1940 or so; (2) temperatures fall a little from 1940 to 1970; (3) temperatures then rise a little but do not quite regain the heights of the 1940’s; (4) despite mean temperatures ranging from -2ºC to -15ºC (total means range 13ºC), and a range of temperature anomalies from each mean of only 9ºC from warmest year to coldest year, when mean temperatures are aligned, clear correlations emerge; (5) there are high variations between adjacent years. We shall investigate all this more closely in a minute.
Treering records: I’ve shown here the full records given for the 10 trees that runs from 1800 to 2000; but below, I use the same timescale as the thermometer records (1880-2020) for comparison. It is useful to see a few things here already: (6) treering sizes are increasing from 1830; (7) before that they show a decrease; (8) they do show correlation from 1880 on (this is NOT proof that the correlation is due to temperature).
Yamal area: (9) The 7 stations around Salehard seem to go in lock step with each other pretty well. (10) The five Yamal treering records (YAD) also correlate with each other, showing spikes around 1910, 1925, 1940, 1955, 1965, and 1980-1990. (11) But the treerings fall out with each other 1990-2000; and (12) these treering spikes do NOT correspond to the thermometer temperature spikes; but (13) there is a slight correlation with the longterm temperature; however, (14) crucially, there is no hockeystick blade in the thermometer record (15) nor is there one in the treering record if we remove the red YAD061 which is clearly an outlier – only a plateau’d elevation of the peaks throughout the 20th century starting before the real CO2/temp rise (and this is actually matched by pre-1800 values at times).
Excuse me for wondering if treerings beat to a different drum than temperature – it is certainly curious that there appears to be something causing correlations in the treerings. Wind? Sunspots? The moon? But let’s check by zooming in a little closer…
Salehard close-up: (16) all the nearby thermometer records mirror Salehard closely, although stations are up to 500 miles apart, the range of mean temperatures is -2ºC to -9ºC, and the range of annual temperatures at each station is up to about 9ºC – altogether a remarkable consistency. Click to see animated version of these records. (17) The close fit of Mys Kamennij (pale sea-blue) is particularly significant, since it is maritime and rural, and the same distance as Salehard from the treering site (some 120 miles), but in the opposite direction; (18) Ostrov Waigatz (Vaigach Island) shows the same pattern but with greater extremes; (19) in comparison with all this, the treering records show virtually no correlation at all – yet since treering differences between summer and winter exist at all, one would expect to see some correlation with warmer and colder years. (20) Perhaps if a far larger sample were used, a correlation might be detected, but clearly (21) we have trees here that are far too individual – especially YAD061.
Polar Urals: Here are seven station records around the Polar Urals site, compared with the five Taimyr (POR) treering records. (22) Mean temperatures are lower here – further North but also more continental, so perhaps the summers are as warm as Yamal, with similar near-treeline environment. (23) more noise in the temperature record, but the overall pattern is still the same; (24) 1943, 1967, 1983 are warm in common with the Salehard records, and 1940 is cold; other years are harder to compare. (25) The early fragmentary records for Dudinka and Turuhansk still fit together and overlay the Salehard records well, showing clear temperature rise between 1880 and 1940. (26) The treering records are fairly coherent, more so than the Yamal ones, and (27) they fit the Yamal records’ spikes in 1910, 1925, 1940, 1955, 1965, and 1980 on, but (28) again, this does not fit the temperature record.
The best of both record series: Really rural thermometer records from the maritime Arctic: (29) show the strongest pattern yet which (30) fits the other two sets of thermometer records but (31) does not fit the treering records even though (32) the treerings show coherent patterns within themselves, despite the two sites being some 800 miles apart.
Briffa’s full chronology: The Yamal chronology Briffa used (black) is compared with Polar Urals (green) and shows recent temperatures exceeding the Medieval Warm Period but (33) this is highly questionable, as is the recent final uptick. No MWP supports the alarmist “Unprecedented!” yet Polar Urals generally have been shown to fit local thermometer records better than Yamal for the period of overlap.
More GISS Arctic graphs: There are many serious problems with GISS but we can only take the evidence here. (34) GISS 64ºN+ shows a misleading trend line – temperatures rise to 1940, fall to 1970, rise to 2000 but not higher than 1940, then level off after 2000; (35) I don’t know what stations went into this composite – the final uptick alerts my suspicions to some UHI or other station problems; (36) Tamino takes the biscuit for cherrypicked trends in the GISS 80ºN+ North Polar winter record (sea green) – it clearly opposes the general worldwide fall in temperatures 1940-1970. However, it’s interesting to see such extremes.
GISS’ homogeneity adjustments: Thankfully, only a few of these Russian records are “adjusted”. But the alterations are telling. Surgut spikes upwards over Salehard from about 1960 on – but (36) the adjustment (probably UHI) is perversely done by truncating and moving earlier records upwards, instead of adjusting later records downwards. And (37) why were Salehard’s and Ostrov Uedine’s earlier “raw” records omitted in the adjusted records? I think every correction here will tend to amplify global warming trends.
GISS world temperatures, 2008: This map was shown in Tingley & Huybers’ latest Hockey Stick presentation at PAGES conference. GISS’ own station records around Yamal and Polar Urals appear to show (38) this map is misleading, since according to GISS’ own records, above, averages local to Yamal / Polar Urals after 2000 are at the most 1.5ºC anomaly (above local mean).
CRU Arctic temperatures, seasonal anomalies: (graph by romanm) Since this is from uncheckable individual station records, (39) the figures could be contaminated by various “correction” factors, (41) UHI is especially likely in the winter. But note that (42) the difference in character between months, and between summers and winters, is striking – summers have hardly changed – and (43) still no definitive Hockey Stick as per illustrations and per Briffa’s Yamal treering record, nothing beyond the range of natural patterns clearly evidenced here. Even the known slight overall increase during the twentieth century takes place mainly earlier in the century.
Conclusions: There is no sign whasoever of a Hockey Stick shape with serious uptick in the twentieth century, in the thermometer records. Yet these records are clearly very consistent with each other, no matter how long the record or how cold, high, or maritime the locality, with a distance span of over a thousand miles. Neither does the Hockey Stick consistently show in the treerings except in the case of a single tree. Even with thermometer records that are incomplete and suffering other problems, the “robust” conclusion is –
“Warmist” treering proxy temperature evidence is falsified directly by local thermometer records.
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it’s all a moot point anyway, because ALL of the multi-year ice is gone anyway….;^)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091029/sc_nm/us_climate_canada_arctic_1
“Sorry, Lucy, I didn’t notice your byline.”
I’ve often not noticed who the author of a post here is, and others have also been mistaken. (For instance, some persons on the Minn. Public website are crediting Bob Tilsdale’s article to Anthony.) I suggest one or more of the following; that:
Buylines be boldfaced and/or set in larger type and/or centered directly under the title (preferably all);
Articles by Anthony explicitly include his name, rather than allowing authorship of unsigned articles fall to him by default.
Clearly one can get as many tree rings as you need. There are lots of trees in Russia.
What one can’t get is an accurate measured temperature record for the reasons mentioned.
So, its it possible to construct an experiment to see if trees are an accurate proxy in a short timespan. Say 5 years.
ie. Lets say you monitor lots of sites for 5 years, with accurate temperature measurements over a wide geographic area.
Pick the sorts of trees used for the poxies. Young and old specimens.
Then sample those trees and check 5 years of rings.
You need the young trees because they are in the old trees.
Can you determine if the poxies are proxies?
Nick
I know Mr Briffa and he is a nice man. I find it hard to believe that he deliberately massaged the data.
I cannot see how his use of (basically) one tree in soviet russia can have led to so much wealth being squandered on such a fruitless pursuit.
How will the world look back on this period in the future?
Lysenkoism but in a whole world full of democracies and independent research labs.
I don’t believe in AGW or climate change yet you do get pulled along with the belief “How could they all be so wrong? It must be true!”
It is only when I hear our Government Ministers speaking on the issue that I realise they have absolutely no conception of the arguments involved.
Is it because newspapers rely on sensationalism to sell copy?
Ice not melting much. Should be back to normal in a few months! Not much of a story i suppose.
In other news, my government has decided to give away my money to other countries to “help stop a 2 degree rise in global temperature”. How on Earth this is going to stop natural climate variation I have no idea. Perhaps if you lined up 200,000,000 5p coins on the ground their combined albedo would reflect so much radiation from the Sun back into space? Whatever, the next hockey stick is going to be the rate of increase of my taxes!
re:Bill I would have thought that work should not be published until the data is available for other scientists to check. Is that not the procedure. Perhaps the COLD FUSION people should have published and embargoed their data and just said ” My data shows cold fusion happens. I am working on developing it further. So i cannot release the way I did it just yet.Oh and by the way… spend millions and billions to help me develop this for the benefit of future humanity” But they did not take that approach and their data and experimnents were not repeatable… mmm checking other people’s experiments to see if the results were fluke or were reproducible. Now there’s a novel idea!
Lucy,
Excellent work. I really loved the last line;
“Warmist” treering proxy temperature evidence is falsified directly by local thermometer records.
Anthony, at what point can we begin using the five letter f-word?
Each passing day becomes more frustrating as the scientific case for AGW falls apart, while the propaganda efforts continue unabated (under the guise of science), with most of the mainstream media actively participating as advocates, either through ignorance or under the assumption that, since it fits their left wing agenda, the ‘truth’ of the matter is relative.
Lucy:
Excellent compilation. Your story almost writes itself. It does seem as though the “amateurs” have truly opened up CAGW’s Pandora’s box.
In response to ErichH and Jeff B, AGW supporters (Colose in Climate Change in response to my comment there) say that ‘increasing CO2 means an increase in energy available, so eventually global warming is going to win against the
background noise of the climate system.’. Thus it comes down to numbers
doesn’t it? No one denies CO2 has GHG activity. But to what effect in the actual environment? As just an onlooker in this debate, I want to know why anyone is interested in anything other than the magnitude of the CO2 climate sensitivity and what its range should be for the influence of CO2 to be negligible? Isn’t this at the heart of the issue?
The joke in the popular press is that for the AGW crowd, it’s global warming if it’s hot and global warming if it’s cold. But joking aside, don’t they have a point if the CO2 sensitivity is high enough? Wait one thousand years and who cares but wait one hundred years – and well, our kids will be around and perhaps some of us as well.
Nice work Lucy. I think the bottom line here is the tree rings do not reflect temperature in the region – at all. They have that stopped watch quality (once in a while they reflect the temperature).
As per false trend lines I have noted this problem many times in the GISS (please do not call it “NASA”, we at NASA are a diverse lot) data and NCDC data.
Let me explain. Draw out a steady sine wave with a long wave length. If you start your graph when the wave is near minimum and end it when it is near a maximum and draw a line between the end points you see a huge ‘upward’ trend, even though the actually amplitude is not changing.
Look at your graph ‘comparing trend with more natural smoothing’. You can see the makings of a sine curve with the record starting near a minimum and ending near a maximum.
Which leads me to your second result – the alarmists don’t know how to do math right, or refuse to do it right. It is all a big scandal of incompetence or disinformation (sometimes I think both).
“I scaled all the GISS thermometer records to the same temperature scale, and ran them all from 1880 to 2020 at the same time scale (GISS graphs do not do this).”
“Treering records: I’ve shown here the full records given for the 10 trees that runs from 1800 to 2000; but below, I use the same timescale as the thermometer records (1880-2020) for comparison.”
“How do you obtain a thermometer record going out to year 2020 when we are still in year 2009?”
Come on guys and gals, give me a break! Look at the graphs and you will see that the abscissa runs from 1800 to 2020 but the data only goes out to just short of 2010.
Excellent Lucy, you’ll soon be up there with Steve M. himself.
bill:
“Also you are calling into question Briffas plot of temperature.”
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck . . .
“Perhaps you should remove a few of the “scandalous” comments in yoiur text?”
When you decide to write your own article, supporting Briffa’s study, you can use whatever words you choose.
Good Skeptical View website
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
Well done Lucy,
Even if faults can be picked out there is quite a case to be answered.
If the professionals fail the amateurs can prevail.
Lucy, this is an epic piece of work and most helpful in putting together pieces of the jigsaw of conflicting data and ‘interpretation’ on tree rings and temp measurements. Ii feels increasingly as though we are all in a parallel universe as we listen to the latest political manoevrings and posturings in the run up to Copenhagen. A dialogue of the deaf or rather no dialogue, just the deaf.
Dennis Hopkins: Its seems that Briffa was given the data by his Russians mates so maybe you are right
BTW this looks like it may be major story material? (similar to the Briffa one posted at CA?)
Just to emphasise a point. I’m not, repeatedly not, accusing Briffa or his team of fraud. But I am using the language I feel is appropriate for a global issue, on the lines that “extraordinary claims need extraordinary proofs”. The ramifications of Briffa’s work extend far beyond his personal visions, I think, that brought him into this work. I could have been in his shoes, doing inadequate science with “confirmation bias”. I’m aware that my work here is not perfect. And I was a warmist myself, once. I suspect Monckton was too. And many others. I think we are crossing a Rubicon insofar as we are all going to have to wake up to how our personal actions can have global consequences we didn’t perhaps consider. And if we don’t face it alive we still face it in facing death. So while I used strong words I also care for Briffa the individual. In fact, if I didn’t care, I don’t think I could use such strong words.
Great work, Lucy Skywalker. You make the issue so clearly visible. I look forward to having more time to read in detail.
Nice work Lucy.
Bill above said that:
“TRW is associated more with summer warmyh than average yearly temperature. I assume your plots are the latter? and therefore not very relevant”,
I think your plots are highly relevant.
For example Salehard June-July-August temperature data does not show any unusual warming. Maybe if you have time you could run the same plots using the summer temperatures only?
Like some other people above, I would prefer toning down the language a bit, the data you present should do all the talking.
Ok so there’s no match. We still need to reduce our dependency on foreign oil and move away from CO2 emitting fossil fuels. It’s yucky.
Plus there are many other global interests to advance by not being mean about the global warming glitch. People are human.
And those who care deeply about our planet should be given an added extension of forgiveness and appreciation.
So be nice and let’s move forward with policies to acheive what’s best for all of us and the planet.
Whew! That hurts.
Lucy surely the hockey stick is seen in instrument readings?
Here are some hockeysticks from europe – recent temperature records (from1850)
And a couple of proxy grape harvests one going back to 1380 (note these are reverse hockey sticks – cold = longer ripening hot = shorter ripening.
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8184/pinotnoirswissoxdihad.jpg
And here’s hadcrut3v with a synthesised version allowing projection to future temperatures!!
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/6135/synthesisedtemperature.jpg
All these show the characteristic shape. The only questionable thing is the shaft – just how flat is it?
Well you say proxy = no good
The MWP is in dispute (hence the need for proxies)
All we have is current temperature measurements. I have plotted many from around the UK all show the rise in temp from the 60s to today (small island sites tiree, lerwick, showing similar to Ross on wye, Oxford) Not all of these are UHI effects. Not all can be discounted.
How do you explain the rise?
If we are running an AGW phase of existence then it will take years to correct. No one is suggesting the end of the world, just rather nasty changes, population movements drowned cities, not world shattering just something I would rather my children not have to contend with.
Fossil fuels are FINITE resources one day they will become too expensive to use. Nuclear is simply pushing our pollution onto future generations. A Chernobyl size accident in the UK (and one will happen) will kill millions and make vast % of UK uninhabitable.
What is wrong with forcing fuel efficient vehicles on the population? What is wrong with extending the fossil fuels by using intermittent renewable power?
Should we not be thinking of our children’s children’s future. There is no point relying on something coming to our aid – fusion etc – it MAY arrive too late.
I hope as a former AGWr you read the posts here and elsewhere with an open mind. Why are your and other sceptic views correct, no error, no wrong assumption, when any scientist suggesting/confirming AGW are liers and cheats deserving hanging drawing and quatering? Does this sound like open debate to you?
Lucy
Very nice work.
I basically think that a lot of the work from the professionals is experimental, coming as it does from a very new branch of science that relies more on models than observational evidence.
Dr Mann had his experimental work suddenly elevated to a world icon, and had to either retract or defend. Any historian knows that what he says is unsustainable.
Similarly anyone looking at the recent temperature record since 1850 knows how highly processed the information is, and that dropping sites then selecting new ones means the micro climate being recorded is no longer valid. The 1850/1880 termperature data is experimental.
As for tree rings, surely this is the most abstract one of the lot-it records moisture much better than temperatures-the two are not necessarily the same thing.
When experiment is piled on experiment and touted as being factual, that is when we start to see the problems arise. In consequence side stepping has to take place-that co2 concentration was constant, that climate never varied much before the modern age, that the MWP was cooler than today, that temperatures have risen rapidly-omitting to mention they are taken from a low point of the little ice age. So temperatures have risen since the LIA-who would have thought it?
Sooner or later it unravels, but whether it will do so before Copenhagen seems unlikely.
Tonyb
Lucy, nicely done. Even I understood it, and I am an idoit!
Contrary to some popular opinion (wishes, my own included), this does not “kill” the theory of AWG. What it does do it throw some light onto some of the questionable peer reviewed studies and methodologies used solidify the AWG theory and used to ram the alarmist “consensus” view down the world’s throat.
In light of the quickly approaching Copenhagen soirée, the question becomes, how do we get the attention of the politicians who might have the presence of mind to consider the weakness of some of the AGW underpinnings before crafting drastic policy to combat the “problem”.
PS
Briffa makes it plin in his Royal Society paper that the trees only respond to temperatures for a couple of months (around july) and the response month is different in different areas.
How do your plots of average anual temperature prove or disprove the temperature effect on tree rings?
PPS I wish I had your faith in the future of the human race. I have read your website and it certainly did not give me that faith. :o(