Now IPCC hurricane data is questioned
Open science: Got Excel? Debunk this
By Andrew Orlowski The Register
Above: Hurricane ACE data from Ryan Maue. Note where 2009 is in the scheme of things. More here.
More trouble looms for the IPCC. The body may need to revise statements made in its Fourth Assessment Report on hurricanes and global warming. A statistical analysis of the raw data shows that the claims that global hurricane activity has increased cannot be supported.
Les Hatton once fixed weather models at the Met Office. Having studied Maths at Cambridge, he completed his PhD as metereologist: his PhD was the study of tornadoes and waterspouts. He’s a fellow of the Royal Meterological Society, currently teaches at the University of Kingston, and is well known in the software engineering community – his studies include critical systems analysis.
Hatton has released what he describes as an ‘A-level’ statistical analysis, which tests six IPCC statements against raw data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) Administration. He’s published all the raw data and invites criticism, but warns he is neither “a warmist nor a denialist”, but a scientist.
Hatton performed a z-test statistical analysis of the period 1999-2009 against 1946-2009 to test the six conclusions. He also ran the data ending with what the IPCC had available in 2007. He found that North Atlantic hurricane activity increased significantly, but the increase was counterbalanced by diminished activity in the East Pacific, where hurricane-strength storms are 50 per cent more prevalent. The West Pacific showed no significant change. Overall, the declines balance the increases.
“When you average the number of storms and their strength, it almost exactly balances.” This isn’t indicative of an increase in atmospheric energy manifesting itself in storms.
Even the North Atlantic increase should be treated with caution, Hatton concludes, since the period contains one anomalous year of unusually high hurricane activity – 2005 – the year Al Gore used the Katrina tragedy to advance the case for the manmade global warming theory.
The IPCC does indeed conclude that “there is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones.” If only the IPCC had stopped there. Yet it goes on to make more claims, and draw conclusions that the data doesn’t support.
Read the rest of the story at the Regsiter here
All they want, at the end of the day, is to save CARBON TRADE. It will go on, no matter a hundred thousands Climate Gates. It’s too big a business to lose it. Just imagine! it means making money out of a trace gas without even taking any care if it provokes or not any warming at all. All they are experts in making money out of nothing, of diligently pouring the empty into the void and convince us we have to pay our lives for it. Believers and deniers alike, we all, will have to pay them, this is our fate!. Just take your SOMA and keep smiling!!. Very famous and intelligent professors will tell you a beautiful tale for you to sleep and , if you don’t, they will tell you the world is going to end in a very very ugly nightmarish way if you don’t behave as they wish you to do.
Slarti @ur momisugly 7:31. I saw the summation and Monckton whomped Lambert. I particularly liked his point that recent and repeated calculations of climate sensitivity to CO2 from measurements rather than from models have showed a small sensitivity. And, of course, Monckton’s emphasis on poverty for his ultimate point, which was the crux of the eruption in Copenhagen.
But by all means, keep searching for the summary. It is devastating, and a metric for Tim Lambert’s delusions.
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re: Tom P (02:16:26)
I’m just in browsing mode, and I don’t have time to dig into this but …
What are the degrees of freedom here? Obviously, you’re using one-tailed tests, since with such puny values of t, none of them would be significant with two-tailed tests. Since a one-tailed test requires a directional hypothesis, I don’t think it would be appropriate for hypothesis 2, and t = 1.21 isn’t even close to being significant for a two-tailed test (it has to be about twice that at least). In this case, I don’t know what is meant by “confirmed”; nor do I understand the argument here in regard to hypothesis 3.
Basil 7:30:40 Tom P cherry-picking? Hey wasn’t he defending the enchanted orchard at Yamal?
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Tom Moriarty @ur momisugly 6:28:30
Oh, very nice. Your link shows Kevin Trenberth using a high Accumulated Cyclone Energy to justify belief in AGW. Now that ACE is low? Well, we don’t hear from him. We hear from Tom P.
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Tom P (04:54:25) :
Nick Stokes (03:12:40) :
10.3.6.3 Tropical Cyclones (Hurricanes)
Earlier studies assessed in the TAR showed that future tropical cyclones would likely become more severe with greater wind speeds and more intense precipitation. More recent modelling experiments have addressed possible changes in tropical cyclones in a warmer climate and generally confirmed those earlier results. NOT VERIFIED – JUST A FORMAL STATEMENT
3.8.3.2 North Atlantic
In 2005, the North Atlantic ACE was the third highest since 1948, – NOT EVEN TRUE
Tropical Cyclones (Hurricanes and Typhoons)
Results from embedded high-resolution models and global models, ranging in grid spacing from 100 km to 9 km, project a likely increase of peak wind intensities and notably, where analysed, increased near-storm precipitation in future tropical cyclones. Most recent published modelling studies investigating tropical storm frequency simulate a decrease in the overall number of storms, though there is less confidence in these projections and in the projected decrease of relatively weak storms in most basins, with an increase in the numbers of the most intense tropical cyclones. NOT PROVEN
FAQ 3.3 Has there been a Change in Extreme Events like Heat Waves, Droughts, Floods and Hurricanes?
However, numbers of hurricanes in the North Atlantic have also been above normal in 9 of the last 11 years, culminating in the record-breaking 2005 season. REALLY, IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE IT?
16.3.1.3 Extreme events
These suggest a strong possibility of higher risks of more persistent and devastating tropical cyclones in a warmer world. WITH OUR “RECORD BREAKING” TEMPERATURES IN THE 2000S WE WOULD EXPECT TO SEE LOTS OF THIS, WOULDN’T WE?
Just how many holes do you want me to pick in this so called “Settled Science”, or do you now admit they were just guessing?
rw (07:42:09) :
I think we cross-posted. I agree that the tests appear to be one tailed, and question the appropriateness of that. But I also think that the “samples” were not properly compared, and that when they are, the MH is significantly higher, in the Atlantic Basin, for 1999-2009, even with a two tailed test. I think all of this may detract from what might really be the more important thing here, which was to look at all the basins, not just the Atlantic Basin. But that seems to have been marred by some questionable statistics.
I think my bona fides as a “skeptic” are unquestionable. And I’m finding it very hard to find anything worth getting excited about in this paper. I think it is very poorly done. I think there may be errors, both in methodology, and in actual calculations. I think it has some merit, but in the day when I peer reviewed, it is the kind of paper I would have recommended rejecting, with a long list of things the author would need to do to merit publication.
All of that said, I took the author’s data for the MH (major hurricanes) in the Atlantic basin, and did a simple “Chow test” on the data. I let my software use a default setting for the break point, which turned out to be 1977. With that, I got:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Augmented regression for Chow test
OLS estimates using the 64 observations 1946-2009
Dependent variable: MH
HAC standard errors, bandwidth 2 (Bartlett kernel)
coefficient std. error t-ratio p-value
——————————————————–
const 4.07097 0.774295 5.258 2.04E-06 ***
time -0.0770161 0.0384035 -2.005 0.0494 **
splitdum -5.72516 1.32011 -4.337 5.62E-05 ***
sd_time 0.163246 0.0450271 3.626 0.0006 ***
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
All variables highly significant. The basic trend, until 1977, was downward. Then the trend after 1977 is upward.
So what? How does this “prove” AGW? Why were the number of MH’s trending downward for three decades? Were we driving our vehicles backwards, removing CO2 from the atmosphere back in day? Or are we looking at a multidecadal pattern of natural climate variation?
While I appreciate all the drubbing that IPCC has been getting, one thing to point out is that even when IPCC was right on the numbers, it may have well been very wrong on the cause. We do not need to prove that the number of MH’s were not increasing, in some statistically significant fashion, in recent years, to question the IPCC’s conclusions in the matter. Besides the obvious debunking that has gone on lately, the IPCC is one of the clearest examples of special pleading you’ll see anywhere outside of a courtroom. As such, it has absolutely no credibility as a scientific document, and anyone who thinks so, who genuinely thinks so, is either not a scientist, or is a poor excuse for one.
Les Hatton’s analysis wouldn’t pass peer review for a variety of reasons. This whole IPCC-gate with the hurricanes is a LOT of nonsense and amateurish, I hate to say.
For those interested in learning about the ocean’s influence on climate, here’s a short primer on the AMO/PDO: click
This submittal is slightly off topic. But in the context of IPCC AR4 report and its many “gates” I submit this to the blog with the hope of getting feedback.
Here are a set of statements taken out of context from an opt-ed piece in the Albuquerque Journal on February 15. The author is PhD Physicist from Sandia Laboratories. There is so much wrong with the op-ed I would have write another one to refute and explain the errors in this op-ed. But, I think I should tell the editors of the paper something. They need to be held accountable for “anti-science”. Any suggestions or should I just forget it?
The Wegman report was submitted in 2006. I down loaded the Mashey report. It seems to be more of a rant against the conservative “think tanks” The evidence for a criminal act is not clear. The statements:
1.The first decade of this century was the warmest ever recorded in human history
2. Ice is melting at an accelerating rate and the sea level is rising.
3. Weather patterns are changing as the atmosphere and oceans adjust to the warming
4. The successful predictions of global warming theory represent a major scientific achievement.
5. In 1998 a team of scientists combined thermometer measurements with pre-instrumental temperature measurements determined from tree rings and other natural records. The resulting graph demonstrated how exceptional the recent rapid warming has been, rising so sharply, it looked like the blade of a hockey stick.
6. The hockey stick became the iconic symbol of global warming, even though it was only one of the many lines of evidence.
7. To many researchers, the investigation was nothing more that an anti-science witch hunt. Scientists play by well defined rules. They require peer-reviewed publication, logic, and evidence.
8.The embattled scientists were understandably angry and were not always circumspect in their private messages. They had not expected that political activists- willing to tap phones and break into computers- to steal their correspondence. They hadn’t done anything wrong, but their words were twisted and taken out of context, e-mails were published by bloggers and broadcast media for who controversy and conflict trumps accuracy and fair play. This non-scandal became known as “Climategate”.
9. The actual scandal is associated with the hockey stick congressional inquiry. Last month a blogger called “Deep Climate” demonstrated that, in cruel irony, the Wegman team actually used material plagiarized from a textbook written by one of those scientists under investigation. The meaning of the stolen text was changed.
10. New evidence continues to mount. Independent investigator John Mashey has just released a report in which he meticulously builds the case a corrupt and probably criminal conspiracy to mislead Congress in the hockey stick investigation. The real scandal to investigate is one that appears to involve a deliberate high-level scheme to undermine research, create confusion and impede progress on science-informed climate policy.
Is it my imagination , or does there to be a coincidence with the short sunspot cycle? The 11 year cycle? Might cosmic rays or the lack thereof be a causal factor?
Ryan Maue (08:31:32) :
Les Hatton’s analysis wouldn’t pass peer review for a variety of reasons. This whole IPCC-gate with the hurricanes is a LOT of nonsense and amateurish, I hate to say.
I hate to say it too, but I agree.
Bootnote (From the Regsiter Story above)
‘The IPCC’s AR4 chapter lead was Kevin Trenberth, who features prominently in the Climategate emails. In 2005, the National Hurricane Center’s chief scientist Chris Landsea resigned his post in protest at the treatment of the subject by Trenberth.
“I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth’s actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4.”
Critics point out that an increase in low-intensity storms being recorded is due to better instrumentation. Most are at sea, and thanks to radar and satellites, more are now observed.’
Robert (00:29:31) :
Status? Presented, submitted, published?
Robert we dont need your stinking “pal reviewed” science. We dont need to worry about whether a paper will be held up and published when Mann wants it publsihed ( yes if they couldnt stop a paper they tried to influence WHEN it was published). We don’t have to worry about reviwers colluding
on the response ( see Jones and Osborn and Mann) we don’t have to worry about the editor being “comprimised” because they are building a file on him ( as Mann suggested) we dont have be concerned with asking editors (Schneider) to invent new categories ( provisionally accepted) for us. No,
we dont need your stinking pal review. We have something better. If the guy
who wrote this posts his data and code, then others will tear it apart RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES. Not anonomously behind your back.
oh hey look Basil is on the job, and hey look ryan is here. No months in review with stupid word limits and page fees. Welcome to the internet.
“As an aside, the notion that work questioning the IPCC’s conclusions is an “x-gate,” i.e., a scandal, is ridiculous. It’s irresponsible and indicative of ignorance of the basic principles of scientific inquiry to imply that work questioning your conclusions is a stain or your integrity or even a big deal.”
GOOD, then you would agree with me that when the people at CRU didnt want to correct a Henry Lamb graph that made its way into the IPCC report because they didnt want to hurt his reputation ( their words its in the mails )it was irresponsible and showed ignorance of the scientific method. So you agree with us about CRU’s behavior in this matter. Good.
mandolinjon 8:41:39
Two names for your perusal. Wegman and Jolliffe. Decentered PCA is not an appropriate statistical technique as used by MBH ’98, and just how the world learned this fact is not as important as the fact itself.
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@ur momisugly Ryan Maue (08:31:32) :
If you hate to say it why are you? If there are a number of reasons why it won’t be published how about telling us one?
While the IPCC has many problems, it is unfair to attack IPCC for guesses that, while supported by literature and data at the time they were made, later turned out to be incorrect.
I agree 100%. After all, even a brief look at the methods of the ipcc’s “Climate Science” should have revealed to everyone that the ipcc statements never had any more real credibility to begin with than the conclusions of “studies” which support the efficacy of OTC “Male Enhancers”.
How could anyone have ever thought otherwise?
Hatton gets at least one thing right – his manuscript is unpublishable.
This is the IPCC AR4 WG1 chapter 3 Executive Summary
“Intense tropical cyclone activity has increased since about 1970. Variations in tropical cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons are dominated by ENSO and decadal variability, which result in a redistribution of tropical storm numbers and their tracks, so that increases in one basin are often compensated by decreases over other oceans. Trends are apparent in SSTs and other critical variables that influence tropical thunderstorm and tropical storm development. Globally, estimates of the potential destructiveness of hurricanes show a significant upward trend since the mid-1970s, with a trend towards longer lifetimes and greater storm intensity, and such trends are strongly correlated with tropical SST. These relationships have been reinforced by findings of a large increase in numbers and proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 and 5 globally since 1970 even as total number of cyclones and cyclone days decreased slightly in most basins. The largest increase was in the North Pacific, Indian and southwest Pacific Oceans. However, numbers of hurricanes in the North Atlantic have also been above normal (based on 1981–2000 averages) in 9 of the last 11 years, culminating in the record-breaking 2005 season. Moreover, the first recorded tropical cyclone in the South Atlantic occurred in March 2004 off the coast of Brazil.”
How does Hatton’s analysis challenge this?
Basil (08:06:33) :
“…these are hardly representative of the complete results of this paper. Talk about cherry picking! These are results for the Atlantic basin. The author looks at other regions, also, and then combines them all for a global analysis. Only in the Atlantic region were the results favorable to Tom P’s POV.”
As the thrust of the paper was to test the basis of the IPCC statements, which concentrated on the Atlantic, it’s hardly surprising that Hatton himself selected those relevant parts of his analysis for his conclusions. It’s therefore absurd to make an accusation of cherry picking on that score, either by him or me.
rw (07:42:09) :
“What are the degrees of freedom here? Obviously, you’re using one-tailed tests, since with such puny values of t, none of them would be significant with two-tailed test.”
You’re getting very confused. I’m reading, not writing this paper. I’m just quoting Hatton’s figures!
Ryan Maue (08:31:32) :
“Les Hatton’s analysis wouldn’t pass peer review for a variety of reasons.”
I also agree. It looks like he both messed up his statistics as well as misinterpreting his own analysis.
Note that the chart goes through 2009. The “scandal” here involves the IPCC’s 2007 report failing to take into account data from the future.
And even the ipcc itself offered the ultimate disclaimer as to the likely truth of any of its “science” by not requiring countries containing about 5 billion of the Earth’s ~6.5 billion people to have to believe its claims and swallow the alleged cure implied by the results of its “science”! So why in the world would anyone else have to believe its allegations and take its “medicine”?
It’s not the ipcc’s fault if people can’t read.
Basil (08:23:09) : you said
“We do not need to prove that the number of MH’s were not increasing, in some statistically significant fashion, in recent years, to question the IPCC’s conclusions in the matter.”
Why do we not need to prove it, if it is not a correct statement?
It is the basis of many sections of the AR4 document.
Can you also say what the Upward Trend from 1977 actually was?
@ur momisugly Tom T … my disappointment comes about whenever a scientist submits something that is rejected. I’ll prepare a post on this rather than just bullet point in the comments.
Tom T 9:37:23
I hate to speak for Ryan, but ‘I hate to say it’ is a colloquialism that does not have literal meaning. What I think he means to say is that he regrets that Hatton’s critique is not robust(I wash my mouth out with soap) in its technique, as has been pointed out by Basil and rw.
Now, I’d hate to hear your response.
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