compare to this:
I had mentioned this new dendro paper to Steve McIntyre, who wrote a short note about it while pointing out that:
A news release on a new tree ring study here (h/t Anthony Watts) reported a reconstruction maxing out in the mid-20th century, with the characteristic late 20th century divergence problem. Their results contrast with CRU’s notorious Yamal chronology:
Following the summer temperature reconstruction on the Kola Peninsula, the researchers compared their results with similar tree-ring studies from Swedish Lapland and from the Yamal and Taimyr Peninsulas in Russian Siberia, which had been published in Holocene in 2002. The reconstructed summer temperatures of the last four centuries from Lapland and the Kola and Taimyr Peninsulas are similar in that all three data series display a temperature peak in the middle of the twentieth century, followed by a cooling of one or two degrees. Only the data series from the Yamal Peninsula differed, reaching its peak later, around 1990. What stands out in the data from the Kola Peninsula is that the highest temperatures were found in the period around 1935 and 1955, and that by 1990 the curve had fallen to the 1870 level, which corresponds to the start of the Industrial Age. Since 1990, however, temperatures have increased again evidently.
Although the reconstruction declined since mid-20th century, the sub-headline reads: “New data indicate rapid temperature rise in the coldest region of mainland Europe”.
I had hoped Steve would do a more in depth look at it, but Pierre Gosselin has already taken a crack at it with this essay, which is worth repeating here.
From Pierre Gosselin’s No Tricks Zone:
Kola Temperature Reconstruction Shows Solar Correlation – Refutes The Hockey Stick
Last week I wrote about a Russian-German temperature reconstruction from 1600 to 2000 derived from tree rings from the Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia . The paper appeared in the journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, Vol. 41, No. 4, 2009, pp. 460–468, by Kononov, Friedrich and Boettger.
In response, German media outlets all hollered “RAPIDLY RISING ARCTIC TEMPERATURES!”, focussing solely on one statement that temperatures have been rising since 1990.
It’s a classic example of how a scientific study comes up with Result A, but the public ends up understanding Result Z, all thanks to sloppy and incompetent communication that exists between the two.
The press release here provides the following Kola temperature reconstruction graph for summertime temperatures:
Kola Peninsula tree-ring temperature reconstruction. Source: Stephan Boehme/UFZ
Here it’s plain to see that the temperature reconstruction shows that Arctic temperatures in the Kola Peninsula have been rising since about 1670. This corresponds exceptionally well with Loehle’s 2007 reconstruction using 18 non-tree-ring proxies for the last 2000 years shown as follows:
Both graphics show the Little Ice Age from 1650 to 1750, at which point a warming event ensues. Then it was generally flat from 1750 to about 1920, and then followed by another rise that took place until 1950. Then Kola tree-ring proxies show a cooling up to 1990. Since 1990 warming has occurred again, but it’s a warming that is completely within the natural range of variation.
The Kola reconstruction (1) agreed with an earlier reconstruction (2) done in the area, see map below. What’s more, the Kola reconstruction (1) was compared with tree-ring reconstructions from other Arctic regions: Swedish Lapland (3), Yamal (4), and Taimyr (5).
Proxy locations used for Kola comparison. Source: Journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, Vol. 41, No. 4, 2009, pp. 460–468
The result of the comparison:
The reconstructed summer temperatures of the last four centuries from Lapland and the Kola and Taimyr Peninsulas are similar in that all three data series display a temperature peak in the middle of the twentieth century, followed by a cooling of one or two degrees.
Only the Yamal reconstruction differed completely, resembling the shape of a hockey stick with the blade beginning at 1900. The hockey stick is becoming an artefact of activism.
Except for the Yamal reconstruction, all tree-ring and non-tree ring reconstructions appear to agree, and so indicate no correlation between temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration.
So what could be driving temperatures then? The authors compared the tree-ring based reconstructions with historical records of sunspots (Lean et al, 1995; Lean, 2000), and say:
We found that over the whole investigated period fluctuations of summer air temperature reconstructed for the Khibiny Mountains in the central part of the Kola Peninsula have a good consistency (r >0.50) with changes of solar radiation (Fig. 10), especially for the low-frequency signal.
In the paper’s conclusion we read:
The broad similarity between this temperature construction and solar radiation indicates that solar activity is an important driver of centennial to multi-decadal trends in summer temperatures of the Kola Peninsula.
So why did all media reports holler “RAPID TEMPERATURE INCREASE IN THE ARCTIC”. Call it complete communication incompetence by the media players between science and the public.
The Kola reconstructions show no link to atmospheric CO2 concentrations. It all started with a solid scientific paper, and but then was distorted (purposely?) by a vague press release that culminated in alarmist media headlines.
Let’s call that press release incompetence-gate.
“……..The hockey stick is becoming an artefact of activism…….”
Artefact yes, but the word implies to me some accidental error of sampling etc.
There’s no doubt in my mind as a layman (thanks to McIntyre & McKittrick and sites like this), that it was also sheer artifice, being a cunning device, an artful contrivance, designed to trick the unwary.
The astonishing thing to me is that so many trained scientists could have been taken in by it.
Glove save!
savethesharks says:
August 7, 2010 at 8:19 pm Heat in the Moscow region
Wind spirals out from “High pressure” and spirals in to “Low pressure.” In the Northern Hemisphere when a High is northeast of a Low the resulting wind will come from the south or southeast. The pattern over Western Russia was this way and brought warm air to the area. You can see some of the info summarized by Rebekah LaBar here:
http://www.greenskychaser.com/blog/page/2/
You will have to work back through the posts. There are 3 for the Moscow area including a map of the pressures for Tue 27/07/10. Rebekah is a grad student studying storms in Oklahoma and not an expert on Russia and its weather – these post are just a sideline for her. Still she reports enough that you can get an idea of the pattern that was set up.
Bring up a map on Google Earth with Moscow at the center and set the zoom to match the map of pressures. There is a black line (1013 mb) and the winds would be flowing northward in this region of the map toward Moscow. Scroll the Google Earth map so you can see the region south of the Moscow region and you will see the “source region” for the air flowing northward. This would be a “cT” region (continental tropical) and in July will be very hot and dry.
I don’t claim this is a “good meteorological analysis” but maybe it will help.
“If I say the average of ten numbers is 8, and you say that can’t be true since one of the numbers is a 5, then all we know is that you don’t know what an average is.”
+++++++++
The purport is to say that it is unfair to object to the inclusion of ‘5’ in average of the sum of the numbers from 1 to 10 (each number representing one of ’10’ studies). The imputation is that we are objecting to the validity of 5 (CRU) because it is too far from 8, the result of all other inputs to the average.
Such comments I have learned are from people shooting from the lip hoping to leave a Post-It Note with a muddy fingerprint on the page to show the children read it.
It is quite true that when calculating an average value of the numbers from 1 to 10, 5 is included. It is also true that this complaint has nothing to do with the tree ring proxy data in the region, a question of importance to adults.
It would be unreasonable to include in every future assessment of tree ring temperature proxies ALL published series available just because they are there. Some, like the infamous Yamal one are so suspect, the conclusions cannot be considered a valid indication of temperature. A careful reading of the paper shows plots but not relevance.
A better mathematical analogy would be an examination of repeats of the study or studies of nearby areas to look for earlier errors or confirm competence.
If 5 studies find 7.8, 7.9, 8.0, 8.2, 8.4 then the average is 8.06.
If study 6 finds ‘5’, reducing the overall average to 7.55 (raising SD and COV suspicions), perhaps there is something wrong with its methodology or sampling, well known to be the case with the Yamal series. Thus provenance matters.
If every time the CRU publishes a tree ring series quite far from the average of everyone else’s, an investigation into the competence of their methods is germane.
If every time a relevant study of tree ring proxy data is published we should look at it closely. If it bears the hallmarks of work by the Climate Reshaping Unit, exercise caution when using its conclusions.
++++++
Reshaping: shape anew or differently
Kola chart, plotted as anomaly and scaled overlain on HS chart.
(baseline was arbitrary)
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/1331/kolaanom.jpg
my apologies- it is overlain on Loehle chart.
savethesharks says:
August 7, 2010 at 8:19 pm
the scale of the scorching heat wave at least in the region of Moscow is pretty remarkable.Can anyone point me to a good meteorological analysis as to what caused this?
Blocking highs,there is an analysis in this weeks Russian academy of science on line journal.These are well described in the literature eg Eady 1949, we observed the same phenomena in 2009 in the SH in Southern Australia/NZ.and the same wailing of shrills such as Connolly,the usual behavior of these spikes is the appearance of the Canard phenomena (and the ability of the pullback attractor to explore deeper valleys) eg chatham islands data vs SH mean statistics.
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh133/mataraka/chathamhadcrugiss2009.png
An interesting point is the spikes in the Kola t series for a single species around the time of the Laki eruption, eg Raspopov
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh133/mataraka/raspopov2004.png
EG Thordarson and Self have shown that the process of sedimentation involved about 175 Mt of the H2SO4 aerosol. This caused a strong pollution (including the formation of “dry fog”) in Europe and in other regions in 1783.. The remaining 25 Mt of aerosol resided at the tropopause level for more than a year. The 1783 summer was characterized by unusual and extreme weather conditions, including the abnormally hot July in West Europe, apparently, due to persistent southern winds. The subsequent winter was one of the most severe winters observed in Europe and North America for the whole period of observations.
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2003/2001JD002042.shtml
“Russian Kola data refutes the Mann hockey stick” Anthony
No, it doesn’t.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-07/haog-sor072910.php
Some background information on Dendrochronology
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=45
savethesharks says:
August 7, 2010 at 8:19 pm
The reason for the Moscow heat wave is the same reason why there’s Low Pressure over the West Coast of the US, when there should be the Summer High: It ain’t moving.
Whatever the season, it’s for whom the pressure cells toll.
This has been going on for a few years now.
Time to dig into the whys.
The higher Arctic temperatures for the 1920-50’s is well documented.
From the article “Variability and Trends of Air Temperature and Pressure in the Maritime Arctic, 1875–2000” Polyakov et al, 2002 Jounal of Climate
In analyzing hemispheric and global temperatures, Jones et al. (1999) documented two distinct warming periods from 1920 to 1945, and from 1975 to the present. The same periods stand out for the 558–858N zonal band (Serreze et al. 2000) and for the circum-Arctic region northward of 628N (this study, Fig. 2). In contrast to the global and hemispheric temperature rise, the high-latitude temperature was higher in the late 1930s through the early 1940s than in recent decades. The magnitude of these maxima was almost indistinguishable within the 558–858N zonal band (Serreze et
al. 2000) whereas northward of 628N the 1938 maximum of annual Arctic SAT (surface air temperature) anomaly reached 1.698C compared with the 2000 maximum of 1.498C. This difference appears to be governed by a much steeper high latitude SAT rise in the 1920s–30s.
Hmmmm, let me check my Mann’s Big Book O’Tricks for some guidance… Ah yes, add a pinch of inverted Tiljander sediments into the mix and that should fix it nicely!
@el gordo says:
August 7, 2010 at 7:16 pm
“In the Kola graph there appears to be a 100 year upward blip from 1660 through to the 1960s, which suggests an oscillation of some sort.”
Spotted, works that way with rainfall too.
I think the divergence problem with most of the tree ring studies is due to the mis-application of “average temperature”. The minimum temperature is driving most of the average rise and trees do not photosynthesize in the dark when the minimum is recorded. Many sites show a decrease in maximum temperatures since the 30’s-50’s, even though the average is rising. There are also a few studies of tree rings that show no divergence problem when the maximum temperatures are used. All this suggests that when it matters most biologically there is no recent warming.
Given that there’s been no attempt to correct for the well known divergence problem, that the two graphs are not on the same scale, which produces misleading visual artefacts, I’d say that there’s absolutely nothing of substance in this post.
But I don’t really expect the readership of this blog to pay any attention to such inconvenient facts 😉
Mosher: “I do believe that Mann’s chart represents an ANNUAL anomaly”
Are you sure Mann isn’t doing an a cumulative sum of the anomalies? That would explain a lot.
Proof of AGW seems to be just as hard to find as the Higgs particle. But it might still be there, somewhere. Who knows?
The first graph is actual temperature, and the second is anomaly data.
If the first graph is right then what is the issue? It would suggest strongly that temperatures are rising, but it is not correlated to CO2. If you need to manipulate data to get the right “look”, then something is wrong. (BTW, even in theory anomalies are not required if the data is all from the same place. Anomalies are required only to set a constant baseline across different zones.)
We are promised that temperatures are spiraling out of control. This shows otherwise. Attack it only on its own merits, not some ludicrous need for anomalisation.
To be fair, I don’t trust treemometers one little bit, to be honest. But then we have to discard all Mann’s usages too, if we get rid of these ones. It cuts both ways.
An interesting newspaper article re: Russian heat wave,
“Germans Deepen Stalingrad Wedge….
….A searing heat wave beat down upon this front and Soviet dispatches said the only relief found by soldiers fighting across the sun-parched steppes was in the partial shade provided by smoke from the battlefields….” The New London Day Sept 1 1942.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=gesiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-3MFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1717,4229475&dq=history+of+battle+of+stalingrad+heat+wave&hl=en
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/6131/kolaloehlehs.jpg
Kola, as anomaly, on top of Loehle and HS. Graphically scaled.
I think that this study does not confirm or deny that temperature reconstructions are correct. It does show that there is a lot more variability and noise in the combination of the various sets of data.
It tells us more of what we do not know, than what we do.
It shows more and more that when measuring a variable item with various different measuring techniques and at different scales and times, that we will get lots of different results and end up non the wiser at the end of it!
Anyone who asserts that this study is as bad as MBH98 AKA “Hockey Stick” should ask himself why the nickname of Keith Briffa is “One Tree”.
I think the original conclusion that trees are not good temperature proxies was correct.
The above sample may closely match what we agw skeptics believe, that the MWP was warmer than present, but the more trees sampled, the more meaningless data we get.
Given all the various demands on Steve’s time – I think we’re lucky that Pierre jumped right in and did some analysis. Thanks to you all for your continued vigilance on these topics.
KDKD. Why “correct” for the divergence problem? It is only a problem because it diverges from the Mann construction of the hockey stick graph. Documented changes in the North Atlantic marine ecosystem supports the Kola temperature data. Hmmm the fish, the trees don’t fit the hockey stick, but you want to correct it? The 20-50’s temperature anomalies indicated by Kola were more extreme than the rest of the northern hemisphere, but that is equally the case for the recent decades.
In: The regime shift of the 1920s and 1930s in the North Atlantic. Drinkwater *2006 Progress in Oceanography
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060406/20060406_03.pdf
During the 1920s, and especially after 1925, average air temperatures began to rise rapidly and continued to do so through the 1930s (Fig. 2a–f). Mean annual air temperatures increased by approximately 0.5–1 _C and the cumulative sums of anomalies varied from 1.5 to 6 _C between 1920 and 1940 with the higher values occurring in West Greenland and Iceland.
The high temperatures recorded during the warm period from 1930–1960 match, and in some cases exceed, the present day warming (Johannessen et al., 2004) The most well-documented biological change that occurred during the warm event was the increased abundance of Atlantic cod off West Greenland. From the late 1910s to the early 1930s they not only increased in numbers but also spread gradually northward from near the southern tip of Greenland to Upernavik, a distance
of over 1200 km (Fig. 7; Jensen, 1939). While cod had always been present in the fjords of West Greenland, the large population increase in the early 20th century was due to their becoming established on the offshore banks. The increased abundance led to the development of a cod fishery, which quickly replaced sealing as the main industry in West Greenland. That the increased landings of cod were simply due to increasing fishing effort can be ruled out, since several expeditions, including ones as late as 1906 and 1908, found no commercial concentrations and indeed few cod at all (see discussion by Buch et al., 1994). However, an expedition in 1909 found enough cod for commercial cod fishing to begin (Jensen, 1949).
The cod fishery yielded moderate landings through the 1930s (<105 mt) but this declined during the war years (Fig. 8). Catches rose dramatically through the 1950s reaching a peak at close to 5 · 105 t in the early 1960s before declining rapidly later that decade. This decline came during a period of decreasing air and ocean temperatures. Cod catches have remained relatively low since the 1970s. The abundance of cod larvae has also been relatively low, at least for the 1970s to the mid-1980s when data were available (Pedersen and Rice, 2002). Coinciding with the decrease in cod was an increase in northern shrimp (Pandulus borealis) and Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides). Indeed, the shrimp fishery replaced cod as the dominant industry in West Greenland and remains so today."
“Let’s call that press release incompetence-gate.”
____________________________
Let’s call it what it is. “Incompetence” it is not. This was then, and is now, a deliberate, premeditated lie. Why? They have their reasons; and it has more to do with money than ‘saving the planet for future generations’ journalism. It was not “incompetence”. It is greed! It is power! It is politics! It is war!