UPDATE: 8/18 10:30AM I spoke with Dr. Judith Curry by telephone today, and she graciously offered the link to the full paper here, and has added this graphic to help clarify the discussion. I have reformatted it to fit this presentation format (side by side rather than top-bottom) While this is a controversial issue, I ask you please treat Dr. Curry with respect in discussions since she is bending over backwards to be accommodating. – Anthony
===========================================================
[Update] My thanks to Dr. Curry for showing the graphic above, as well as for her comment below and her general honesty and willingness to engage on these and other issues. She should be a role model for AGW supporters. I agree totally with Anthony’s call for respect and politeness in our dealings with her (as well as with all other honest scientists who are brave enough to debate their ideas in the blogosphere). I also commend the other author of the study, Jiping Liu, for his comments below.
However, as my Figure 2 below clearly shows, any analysis of the HadISST data going back to 1950 is meaningless for the higher Southern latitudes. The HadISST data before about 1980 is nonexistent or badly corrupted for all latitude bands from 40°S to 70°S. As a result, although the HAdISST graphic above looks authoritative, it is just a pretty picture. There are five decades in the study (1950-1999). The first three of the decades contain badly corrupted or nonexistent data. You can’t make claims about overall trends and present authoritative looking graphics when the first three-fifths of your data is missing or useless. – willis
===========================================================
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Anthony has posted here on a new paper co-authored by Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, entitled “Accelerated warming of the Southern Ocean and its impacts on the hydrological cycle and sea ice”. The Georgia Tech press release is here. Having obtained the paper courtesy of my undersea conduit (h/t to WS once again), I can now comment on the study. My first comment is, “show us the data”. Instead of data, here’s what they start with:
Kinda looks like temperature data, doesn’t it? But it is not. It is the first Empirical Orthogonal Function of the temperature data … the original caption from the paper says:
Figure 1. Spatial patterns of the first EOF mode of the area-weighted annual mean SST south of 40 °S. Observations: (A) HadISST and (B) ERSST for the period 1950–1999. Simulations of CCSM3 (Left) and GFDL-CM2.1 (Right): (C, D) 50-year PIcntrl experiment (natural forcing only),
Given the title of “Accelerated warming”, one would be forgiven for assuming that (A) represents an actual measurement of a warming Southern Ocean. I mean, most of (A) is in colors of pink, orange, or red. What’s not to like?
When I look at something like this, I first look at the data itself. Not the first EOF. The data. The paper says they are using the Hadley Centre Sea Ice and Sea Surface Temperature (HadISST) data. Here’s what that data looks like, by 5° latitude band:
Figure 2. HadISST temperature record for the Southern Ocean, by 5° latitude band. Data Source.
My first conclusion after looking at that data is that it is mostly useless prior to about 1978. Before that, the data simply doesn’t exist in much of the Southern Ocean, it has just been shown as a single representative value.
So if I had been a referee on the paper my first question would be, why do the authors think that any analysis based on that HadISST data from 1950 to 1999 has any meaning at all?
Next, where is the advertised “Accelerated warming of the Southern Ocean”? If we look at the period from 1978 onwards (the only time period with reasonable data over the entire Southern Ocean), there is a slight cooling trend nearest Antarctica, and no trend in the rest of the Southern Ocean. In other words, no warming, accelerated or otherwise.
Finally, I haven’t even touched on the other part of the equation, the precipitation. If you think temperature data is lacking over the Southern Ocean, precipitation data is much worse. The various satellite products (TRMM, SSM/i, GPCC) give widely varying numbers for precipitation in that region, with no significant correlation between any pair (maximum pairwise r^2 is 0.06).
My conclusion? There is nowhere near enough Southern Ocean data on either side of the temperature/precipitation equation to draw any conclusions. In particular, we can say nothing about the period pre-1978, and various precipitation datasets are very contradictory after 1978. Garbage in, you know what comes out …
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The climate science community is in spectacular denial about what is actually occurring in Antarctica. It is a classic case of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
They pile the BS on deeper and deeper with every new theory. Ozone, Grace, blue maps turning magically red, penguins drowning, ice sheets collapsing. It is a three ring circus.
I’ve got to question the journalist’s assertion that future precipitiation would fall as rain. In Antarctica? Do the authors of the paper really believe that? If they do, maybe they’re expecting rain around the continent where the ice forms. But still, that’s going to take quite a warm up to lead to rain as the predominant precipitation type.
A veritable Cirque du Soleil of contortions on a minimalist data set. But why oh why do these people engage in such diversions, maybe for the grants?
Sigh…
It is increasingly frustrating to see where climate science has degraded to.
BTW, I do not accept the assumption that higher water temp is bad either. If any, it should be beneficial to life there, but lets not quarrel about minor details.
Here’s the 1870 dataset…a wonderful old map that shows summer and winter freezing points, icebergs sitings dating from 177os and ocean currents.
http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/cdview?pi=nla.map-rm1658-v
Tsk, tsk … there you go again … letting facts get in the way of a good story.
So, more ice around the Antarctic means warmer southern oceans. Heck, I didn’t need them to do a study for me to know their position. ‘Its colder now, but the trend, we’ll invent one and ……..blah, blah, blah’. Dr. Curry remains a mystery to me. At times, her statements seem to be wavering towards being skeptical. Then she puts a study such as this in.
Willis raises the point, “So if I had been a referee on the paper my first question would be, why do the authors think that any analysis based on that HadISST data from 1950 to 1999 has any meaning at all?”
Looking at Figure 2, 1979-1999 certainly doesn’t have any meaning relating to 1870-1978 and especially at the 60-70 parallels. How someone can contrive any special meaning contextualizing in this manner is puzzling to me.
Surely there was something of more substance than this in the paper?
Denial of reality, a retreat from an actual reality that undermines or destroys a deeply held belief.
A cautionary tale in the making for future generations of scientists? I wonder at the determination of so many supposedly learned people to hold onto their belief in AGW regardless of the growing wave of contradictory evidence, the inability to modify a deeply held belief system.
The supporters of the AGW theory are trying to hide from this contradictory evidence or they try to hide it from the wider population, the MSM by and large has enacted a news blackout on the Antarctic with no coverage whatsoever of the sea ice and almost no coverage of the bitter southern hemisphere winter.
It takes a big man to see and admit and correct his own mistakes, it seems that there is a dire shortage of big men in climate science today.
Willis:
Have you shared this with Judy? It seems so blindingly obvious she must have some reason for spending time on the paper. It sure doesn’t explain the paradox of growing Antarctic sea ice to me.
The top two lines on the SST graph (40-45S & 45-50S) are interesting. Just eyeballing here but the SST pattern seems to have the same shape and trend as my Temperature Index for the South Island of New Zealand (contains results from around 180 surface stations, some of which admittedly have only fragmentary data). The land data comes from the NIWA cliflo database. There are also remarkable similarities with the temp trends from Scott Base and Campbell Island.
What the hell happened in 1940? Godzilla’s evil Stepchangefather?
(And does the answer include the word “bucket”?)
Bernie says:
August 17, 2010 at 8:56 pm
I have not. I am hoping that she might show up and prove me wrong …
it seems that there is a dire shortage of big men in climate science today.
that’s because “climate science” is simply a marketing machine for the global warming industry
If the Southern ocean is warming [raw data, please], then we can look forward to more beneficial CO2. More is better. Right, Judith?
Willis,
Just an initial impression without having read the paper – but the first 4 diagrams include 2 model simulations.
The implication seems to be that the models mimicking purely natural forcings predicted cooling whereas the actual measurements where roughly zero to very slight warming.
Hence the idea that something other than nature has “increased” the temperature in recent times [ie prevented the decrease that aught to have occurred].
A huge amount of current science seems to hang on these models – as if they are real data.
All the data sets in Fig. 2 show a sharp “step up” in temperature during the early 1940’s. Sure, it’s possible that, in our general ignorance about how climate operates, the temperatures would change rapidly as a result of natural processes, but what are the chances that such rapid and almost discontinuous temperature change would “just happen” to coincide with WWII this way? Does climate pay attention to massive changes in the human world order? It’s more likely that, with the rapid spread of new technologies and government bureaucracies during and after WWII, there was a significant and rapid change in the way temperature was measured in this part of the world.
I have the impression that all those National these that and the other that are controlled directly by government have gotten a directive of : ” show up the heat” otherwise the money will run out?
In Greece we have a National Meteorological Office , and a National Observatory of Athens. They are independent in their measurements and the latter is academically controlled. The observatory predictions for the Athens region are two to three degrees lower than the Meteorological Office, but it is the latter that is reported on television.
Example: yesterday they were predicting in Athens temperatures up to 41 degrees and national measures were taken with directions for public air conditioned locations for the indigent. Well, one can go and look at the 24 hour direct measurements of the Observatory, at http://www.meteo.gr/Gmap.asp , and it nowhere went over 38 even right in the center. Maybe they are predicting car temperatures sitting in the sun.
The 40 was reached in Larissa only, as far as I checked, an inland town in the middle of a fertile plain, which cools nicely at night too.
It is evident that the people controlling information want to make the public believe it is hotter than it is.
Maybe it is the same all over the world.
At least Judith Curry is someone who can take the heat and shows up to defend her work even if there is plenty to argue on such paper.
So this is what J. Curry does in her spare time. It’s wonderful how a warmist can unhinge his brain to swallow a contradiction larger than his head.
anna v says:
August 17, 2010 at 9:34 pm
“It is evident that the people controlling information want to make the public believe it is hotter than it is.
Maybe it is the same all over the world.”
For most of the world, it is.
AGW, not Climate Change, always was and always will be a Government sponsored fraud. The term Climate Change is a bob both ways.
I would be asking JC to show us both hands. Me thinks there will be a little finger missing. This ‘paper’ appears to be a ‘sorry’ note. As in an apology.
regards
> Garbage in, you know what comes out …
Gospel!
Hey, you could be nicer to Judith Curry – she’s one scientist who tries to engage courteously with the community, sceptics and warmers alike, in a civil fashion.
GIGO seems far too dismissive a conclusion – perhaps a question to Judith inviting her to explain might be in order.
No discussion about her 2060s’ scenario?
That’s the part that really got me.
Tortured data confesses. Read all about it! Whoever said that climate was a Cinderella science which was taken up by second rate scientists (like James H) got it about right. Present company excepted of course.