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
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[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
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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 …
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Finally, I am not arguing from incredulity. I am applying the reasonableness test.
——–
A rose by any other name …
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax
Of cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings.”
Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland
thompson Denis et al 2009 GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L20704, doi:10.1029/2009GL040104, 2009
This (paywalled) paper also pretends to find warming in Antarctica. The main line is that Gomez dome at the base of the antarctic peninsula shows similar temp rise to a station at the tip of the peninsula where climate is clearly determined by surrounding ocean (so they report it is continental temp rise) .
The principal components extracted from this data shows a 20th c. warming that has already peaked around yr 2000. Thus far the science seems reasonable although they do not even mention the fact the rise appears to have peaked.
They then venture in the computer model fairly land. They compare the rise they find with computer simulations for an earlier period where no data is available and conclude the because the _selected_ 50 year periods do not show similar trends in the models the rise is UNPRECEDENTED and there is a need for more research .
There is no analysis of whether differently selected 50y periods show a rise or, more importantly, whether the models they used AGREED with their core samples for the period where they do have data.
Liz Thompson of BAS is a competent scientist and on the face of it the core data analysis seems sound. However, it seems that they seem to think they have to put the “unprecedented” spin in the conclusion and abstract to get it published in GRL and get funding for next year.
Of course this paper has already been cited by Met office as proof that the warming has been recorded on all continents of the world including Antarctica.
This, plus the Curry paper, will be used in the next IPCC report to “prove” continued unprecedented warming.
Maybe we are witnessing the emergence of womann-made GW.
apologies: Dr Liz Thomas (not Thompson)
I notice on the lattitude band graph, that all lattitudes show a upward blip post 1940. So is this raw data or homogenised, ie has it had the “GISS correction” applied to it as they did with other temperature data, if so it looks like it created a blip where none actually existed.
I also agree with Willis re quantity of data, not much happened down that way prior to the IGY in 1957 and even then shipping only went south in summer months so what periods of the year were covered and what was the quality /quantity of data that was relied on for this study?
Bill Tuttle says:
August 18, 2010 at 1:41 am
First, a reminder that this comment is about the paper “Gille, 2002: Warming of the Southern Ocean Since the 1950s. Science, Vol. 295. no. 5558, pp. 1275 – 1277”.
Bill, it’s worse than simply not having “measurements for less than half the area”. There’s only 240 measurement locations over the entire decade. Suppose we consider the common 5° x 5° grid. In the area in question (40-70°S), that’s 72 x 6 = 432 gridcells. So we have a temperature measurement in maybe half of the gridcells.
Now, if (as on the land) we had “measurements for half the area” for most days, over nearly the complete period of the record, then we would have reasonable data. That’s not uncommon on land, that for a decade or more there may be only one temperature station in a given gridcell.
But we don’t have that continuous record in the ocean. For about half the gridcells, we have no data at all during the decade. For the other half of the gridcells, we mostly have ONE SINGLE MEASUREMENT PER GRIDCELL IN THE ENTIRE DECADE. Not two measurements per day as is usual on land. Not one measurement per month, or even one measurement per year. One measurement during the entire decade.
Which is why I don’t believe the claimed accuracy, six hundredths of a degree.
It is certainly reasonable to question the accuracy of SST temperature readings over the entire dataset. Yet, even forgetting that, there appears to be a high in temperature readings around 1985. So that would give 25 years of southern ocean cooling during the peek rise of CO2. Where is the heat to assume an increase, or am I looking at the graphic all wrong?
richard telford says:
August 18, 2010 at 1:06 am
“Its an easy analysis to do, probably less than 50 lines of R code, and could prove your point. But perhaps you prefer to wallow in your logical fallacy.”
Hey Dick,
I am a layman at here, interested in learning and hearing the truth about the climate. These guys, Steve, Willis, Steven et al come across to me as genuinely facinated and curious about the climate. They also come across as courteous, always willing to explain things to those of us without the technical training.
You don’t come across the same way, why is that? You got some bone to pick here? I’m curious if you’ll take Willis up and do the analysis. Please post it here so everyone can marvel at your prowess.
Everyone here was enjoying the comments on this, apparently lacking, study that was done by a person that, it seems to me, most have respect for here. Then you showed up.
“…thirty million square miles of ocean, with two samples per month … sure, the stated error bounds of ±0.06° may well be the statistical error of their calculations.” I have to go with Willis on this one bonehead.
Please don’t come back with some tripe about how you didn’t mean to offend (as I have just done to you) with some condescending, “I was truly curious…blah, blahblawaaa”, nonsense. On my block [snip].
Sorry Willis, I know you don’t need me to defend you. People like this just…are too many. I just got off work so I’m cranky, I was enjoying catching up on the latest and this guy shows up.
Willis:
I believe that it does us no favours to name call or otherwise insult/belittle those that hold views contrary to our own. It takes maturity to rise above this. Arguments are always best kept cold and dispassionate and such stance assists analysis of the issues raised.
Several people have suggested that Judith should be asked to comment upon the points raised by you and to set out her interpretation on the data sets you refer to and to explain the reasons behind her interpretation. I concur with this.
Willis you say that you hope that Judith will “turn up” and comment. I consider that it would be much better to provide her with your comments and data set and request her comments. If she either refuses or simply decides not to avail herself of the opportunity, this would speak volumes. It would enable you to say that I have raised these points but she has been unwilling or unable to explain her position thereby inferring that she has no good answer to the points raised.
I consider that the best way forward in this ‘battle’ is to engage in a courteous and constructive manner with ‘opponents’ and I would ask you to consider contacting Judith in a courteous manner specifically asking her for her comments and further thoughts etc.
I consider that peer review should always contain the comments of those who hold a contrarian view so that always both sides of the argument are present thereby assisting the reader to make up thier own mind what merit there may be in any study/paper.
Lest Ms Curry forgets.
Discover Interview: It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here: The Big Battle Over Climate Science
(Two eminent climatologists share much different views: Michael Mann—whose private emails were hacked—points a finger at skeptics. Judith Curry believes humans are warming the planet but criticizes her colleagues for taking shortcuts. )
Discover Interviewer, “Where do you come down on the whole subject of uncertainty in the climate science?”
Judith Curry, “I’m very concerned about the way uncertainty is being treated. The IPCC [the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] took a shortcut on the actual scientific uncertainty analysis on a lot of the issues, particularly the temperature records.”
Discover Interviewer, “Don’t individual studies do uncertainty analysis? ”
Judith Curry, “Not as much as they should. It’s a weakness. When you have two data sets that disagree, often nobody digs in to figure out all the different sources of uncertainty in the different analysis. Once you do that, you can identify mistakes or determine how significant a certain data set is.”
The phrase, “Hoist by your own petard” certainly comes to mind.
Interesting paper released by the Australian Academy of Science leaves little room for doubt – perhaps they should have read some of the comments above(?)
http://www.science.org.au/policy/climatechange2010/index.html
So in the North, warmer ocean temperatures are causing the Arctic ice extent to shrink (even though DMI temperatures are below average and freezing) while in the South warmer ocean temperatures are causing the Antarctic ice extent to expand. Not my conclusion, just restating what some other posters have argued.
I guess it’s because everything is upside down there. It must work opposite to up here. Or maybe it’s because when you have a foregone conclusion, all your arguments support it, whether they are consistent or not.
Willis,
Agreed that not many cargo vessels go to the Souther Ocean, but up to the mid 1960s there was a large whaling fleet down there and many of them were weather reporting vessels, according to some of my friends who served with the Salvesen fleet.
Can’t spell – Southern Ocean.
richard telford: August 18, 2010 at 2:01 am
“Finally, I am not arguing from incredulity. I am applying the reasonableness test.”
——–
A rose by any other name …
So tell us, richard,
1 how can one *reasonably* claim to get a ± 0.06°C accuracy from an instrument (a water-temperature gauge in a ship’s boiler intake line) that can only be read to the nearest .5°C and may have an instrument error of another whole degree C, and
2. how can one *reasonably* claim to have measured the decadal temperature change in a standard 5° x 5° grid *at all* without ever having taken one single measurement in it?
Judith just loves being the citizen scientist, so I’m sure she’ll be along any moment now to clarify any issues you may have with her work and allay your fears that her efforts to find out what is happening to our climate are not totally a pile of BS*.
(*Copyright Goddard )
Willis:
Judy has been very courteous and has responded to any email I have sent her. I fear that we are so used to the discourteousness and dismissiveness of folks at RC that we sometimes forget ourselves. You now have an established track record of finding interesting issues so I would think that academics like Judy would be more than willing to discuss and clarify.
Gaylon says:
August 18, 2010 at 3:26 am
“I am a layman at here, interested in learning and hearing the truth about the climate.”
————
An excellent choice, but only if you’re interested in learning sophistry.
[snip. You get your wish. ~dbs, mod.]
Kwik said “I don’t understand.
Do they really expect 40 degrees increase in tempeature in Antarctic?”
Sure they do. There on the southern peninsular. Right next to the runway and the furnace outlet. And right next to the thermometers.
Climate science is the subject of choice for those who find sociology too rigorous.
Willis Eschenbach says:
August 17, 2010 at 11:02 pm
I see your point about the southern oceans manifested in an SST temp series. They are mostly copied according to specific day/mo/ from one year to the next. Only near S. America, Australia and Africa do they change. For most of the Antarctic extent, they do not change as well. A vast area of Earth either does not have any temperature data, or is remarkably stable over decade time frames.
richard verney: August 18, 2010 at 3:36 am
Willis you say that you hope that Judith will “turn up” and comment. I consider that it would be much better to provide her with your comments and data set and request her comments.
Dr. Curry isn’t timid.
Looking at the temperature data, for several of the bands the 2010 temperature is nearly the same as the 1870 temperature. Even if all of the temperature data were valid, where is the warming, accelerated or not?
Willis!
Your our hero! Bringing knowledge in to the democracies.Your letter and response to J. Curry sums it up: “lack of substance”. You’ve by three words audited the whole of climate science.
Thanks Willis!
We’ve failed to take these matters up with Dr Jiping Liu, the individual that perhaps should be asked to respond to our questions and Willis’ comments first. Ever since the news broke of this GT study we’ve been addressing Dr Curry, however, Dr Liu would seem to be first chair on this study.
From his website –
_____________________
http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/~jliu/v0/jliu_research.html
Climate Modeling
Model Development
“Recently, the implementation of a sea ice component that accurately simulates sea ice mass balance, ice extent, interfacial fluxes, and associated feedbacks with the atmosphere and the ocean into coupled global climate models (CGCMs) has received considerable attention in the global climate modeling community. One factor motivating such improvements is the enhanced climate sensitivity at high-latitudes, typical CGCM projections of future climate change. Another factor is the increasing observational evidence of significant recent changes in various aspects of polar climate, which require mechanistic understanding and appropriate representation in climate simulations.”
“I have been collaborating with Gavin Schmidt, David Rind, Douglas Martinson and Gary Russell to improve the NASA GISS CGCM. I have incorporated more realistic sea ice dynamics (viscous-plastic rheology) and thermodynamics (snow/ice albedo, penetration of solar radiation in sea ice, sea ice salinity budget and ice-ocean boundary formulation) and subgrid scale ocean processes (Gent & McWilliams mesoscale eddy isopycnal mixing with Visbeck scaling mixing coefficients and Wajsowicz viscosity diffusion) in the NASA GISS CGCM, leading to improved sea ice and ocean simulations.”
Model Evaluation
“I evaluated the extent to which CGCM (GISS, NCAR and GFDL) can capture observed polar-global climate teleconnections. The results have been guiding me to improve atmosphere-sea ice-ocean interactions in CGCMs and to design follow-up experiments to deduce the underlying mechanisms responsible for the polar-global climate teleconnections.”
“I have been participating into the Arctic Regional Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ARCMIP) and collaborating with Judith Curry to analyze, compare and evaluate the modeled cloud and radiation fields from different models utilizing in-situ measurements (i.e., SHEBA) and satellite-based products (i.e., ISCCP/FD and CASPR)”