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.
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Thanes says:
“This site seems to be a conglomeration of often contradictory viewpoints…”
Did it ever occur to you that WUWT, unlike alarmist blogs like RealClimate, climateprogress, tamino, SkepticalScience, etc., allows and encourages all points of view?
You can post your opinion here. But we can not post at those sites and ever get out of moderation limbo. Believe me, I’ve personally tried many, many times. So have many others. How do you explain that?
Censoring blogs — which include every alarmist blog — do not allow opinions different from their Party line. What do you think they are afraid of? Different points of view?
Looks to me like the ACRIM data isn’t robust and could even be read to show decreased TSI. PMOD clearly shows decrease, and sunspot counts correlate with PMOD. If your going to just throw out the statement “solar activity has been greater in the last 50 years than any time in the last 400” it would help if that was actually broadly accepted.
Look, everything you people write is both barrels, everything is a lie! And every time I look into the statements written with the broadest and most forceful strokes, well it seems that the statement is not justified. Anyone got just one thing they can say that would actually stand up to scrutiny?
By the way, I do appreciate that these posts have stayed up. No lagging in approval, and no editing.
Thanes says:
August 8, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Look, everything you people write is both barrels, everything is a lie! And every time I look into the statements written with the broadest and most forceful strokes, well it seems that the statement is not justified. Anyone got just one thing they can say that would actually stand up to scrutiny?
I’m reminded of an old episode of “Quincy”. A business man offers a $100,000 reward for anyone who can provide evidence the holocaust was real. Quincy and friends spend the rest of the episode collecting evidence. When they present the evidence at the end of the show, he tells them…..All Lies.
If the shoe fits……
Opposing views are welcome on this blog, but you have been given the benefit of doubt and it appears that you’re just trolling.
Thanes you are starting to appear disingenuous. You say “PMOD clearly shows decrease, and sunspot counts correlate with PMOD” . No argument
So if you look at the sunspot record which is generally accepted the statement stands.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png
Then you say everything is a lie!? Every thing I wrote is documented in peer review literature. So how do you call every thing a lie?
The paper on regime shifts in the North Atlantic is cited above. Here’s the citation for the increase in Penguins in the Ross Sea which is the most studied population.
“Decadal-scale changes in the climate and biota of the Pacific
sector of the Southern Ocean, 1950s to the 1990s” DAVID G. AINLEY et al , Antarctic Science 17 (2), 171–182 (2005)
Maybe you should check yourself and do some reading before you call people liars!
You have to subtract the mean to get a better picture. I see a bit of a hockey stick in that figure.
So Kola Peninsula is all of the northern hemisphere again?
vukcevic says:
August 8, 2010 at 10:54 am
Enneagram says: August 7, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Now I have a full correlation from 100-2000AD between Loehle’s reconstruction and the GMF at the Denmark Strait passage.
All details at :
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC1a.htm
—…—…—
Very interesting start! From your linked page, how can we contact you to address specific questions about your offsets and scales?
RACookPE1978 says: August 9, 2010 at 8:48 am
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC1a.htm
Very interesting start! From your linked page, how can we contact you to address specific questions about your offsets and scales?
This is work in progress.
1600-2000 data are fairly reliable, temperature lags 20 years behind the geomagnetic data.
It should be kept in mind that for period 0 -1600 climate and paleo-magnetic proxies are used, so there is great uncertainty, not only about values but also dating.
It should be kept in mind that for period 0 -1600 climate and paleo-magnetic proxies are used, so there is great uncertainty, not only about values but also dating.
Up to 1100 AD there is a reasonable values agreement, but there is about 30 years timing difference, but this time in the opposite direction.
1100-1600 is far more problematic (since temperatures are now directly proportional to magnetic intensity, there is also serious nonlinearity between two time scales.
I will be periodically updating the web page.
I hate tree rings… very difficult proxy to use with lots of problems… I’m not a fan… 🙁
Jim Steele:
This is incorrect. The divergence problem is a problem because the tree ring temperature proxies diverge from both the instrumental record and other concurrent proxy data.
Jim Steele and Gilbert,
I am sorry for how that came out. I was paraphrasing the longer posts that were just previous against AGW. I did not mean to say these posts themselves were “all lies,” but rather that they seemed to take that stance towards any climate science supporting what is here termed AGW is made up of “all lies!” By using the phrase “all lies”, I was briefly parodying what I felt was a frequent blanket stance, where posts had major points of contention with global warming, in series. That is, so many posts have twelve points of disagreement with “AGW”, and yet, when I look into the first point regarding the physics, that is, that solar forcing has been higher in the last 50 years than any of the last 400, it isn’t supported by the literature as the blanket statement as it is given.
The troll-like character of my last post was unintentional, and because of poor punctuation in a rushed setting. Please consider this as an apology. I do, however, still think the data regarding the issue of solar forcing argues strongly for “AGW.”
“The press release here provides the following Kola temperature reconstruction graph for summertime temperatures”
Why only summertime temperatures? Do the trees stop growing and providing data to the tree rings in the summer? I take it these aren’t year round trees, like varieties of pine.
Thanes,
One of the best resources you will find to articulate the argument against AGW from increasing CO2 is Dr. Roy Spencer’s book “The Great Global Warming Blunder”.
Other than that, spend some time on the WUWT archives. You will find a fair representation of all of the problems with the current AGW science.
kdkd said “This is incorrect. The divergence problem is a problem because the tree ring temperature proxies diverge from both the instrumental record and other concurrent proxy data.”
kdkd, I suggest you read the literature. From “On the ‘Divergence Problem’ in Northern Forests: A review of the tree-ring evidence and possible causes” 2008 D’Arrigo et al review and define the problem.
“An anomalous reduction in forest growth indices and temperature sensitivity has been detected in tree-ring width and density records from many circumpolar northern latitude sites since around the middle 20th century. This phenomenon, also known as the “divergence problem”, is expressed as an offset between warmer instrumental temperatures and their underestimation in reconstruction models based on tree rings. The divergence problem has potentially significant implications for large-scale patterns of forest growth, the development of paleoclimatic reconstructions based on tree-ring records from northern forests.
But perhaps you have a reference to concurrent proxy data from the same locality? If so I’d like to see it.
Thane you repeat your claim that my statement ” solar forcing has been higher in the last 50 years than any of the last 400″, it isn’t supported by the literature . Did you really look into it? Did you even take the time to look at the sunspot numbers I posted?
If you really investigated this, then please tell me during what 50 year period sunspot activity has been higher in the last 400 years. I repost the link for your convenience.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png
RR Kampen says:
August 9, 2010 at 12:59 am
“So
Kola PeninsulaYamal is all of the northern hemisphere again?”There. Fixed it for you…
…not to mention the obviously incorrect notion that the Arctic region represents global ice cover. But when the Arctic is all you’ve got, that’s what you have to hang your hat on, right?
You could simply admit you’re wrong about CO2 and CAGW. That would be honestly refreshing. But then you would be treated like Dr Judith Curry is by the true believers. Can’t have that now, can we?