Like me, Dr. Pielke was queried for this article in the Economist, and like me, he responded. Like Dr. Pielke, I documented some of the responses that were not printed in the Economist here. Additionally, Dr. Pielke documents below how the leader of the new surfacetemperatures.org effort for the UK Met Office, Peter Thorn, didn’t bother to invite him to a recent special conference on the issue as well as some previously documented instances of attempting to “suppress other viewpoints”. Not a good start.
Comments On The Ecomonist Article “Green View: Could Temperature Be Less Intemperate?”
Guest post by Roger Pielke Sr.
I was queried on Monday of this week by the Economist regarding the September Exeter meeting regarding the project surfacetemperatures.org which I posted on in
My comment to the Economist when asked
I wondered what you thought of the surfacetemperatures.org project/plan of action. I know you objected to some of what Peters Thorne and Stott said in their piece in nature about current surface temperature records, but I wondered what you thought of their ideas for making things better in the future.
My response was
In terms of monitoring global warming, the successful installation of an upper ocean heat monitoring system which has been in place since earlier this decade (Argo as complemented with satellite measurements of the ocean) supersedes the need to use the surface air temperature data as the primary metric for this purpose [as I summarize in my article
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-334.pdf].
We can obtain a much more robust measure of global warming (and cooling) by monitoring the upper ocean heat changes.
In terms of improving the surface temperature data (which is, of course, needed for a variety of other purposes such as agriculture, recreation, etc), the goal to improve the access and audit of the data is commendable.
However, they seem to be ignoring known (i.e peer reviewed published) problems with this data. There is, for example, a need to photograph the sites and to seek past photos of these locations in order to see how well they are sited.
They also appear not to be considering other issues that we raised in the papers that I posted on this morning. This includes the warm bias we have found in the minimum land surface temperatures that are used in their construction of a land average temperature trend, and the need to include the effect of concurrent surface air, water vapor trends on the surface air heat (i.e. its moist enthalpy).
There are also issues with the “homogenization” of the data which they use to create grid area averages. When poor- and well-site locations are blended together, for instance, the result appears to be biasing the results [a subject we will be presenting in a paper that is almost complete]. The quantitative steps in their homogenization adjustment needs further scrutiny and it is not clear they will be doing this.
Please let me know if you need further feedback.
Best Regards
The article has now appeared [August 25 2010]
Green View: Could Temperature Be Less Intemperate?
and my response to it is given below.
Thank you for sending. With respect to adding comments on their weblog surfacetemperatures.org, Peter Thorne and colleagues already have seen the issues that we have raised in the set of peer reviewed papers that we have published on this topic; e.g. e.g.
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-321.pdf
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2009: Reply to comment by David E. Parker, Phil Jones, Thomas C. Peterson, and John Kennedy on .Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D05105,
doi:10.1029/2008JD010938.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-321a.pdf
[and see the reviews of the above Comment/Reply of Parker et al where the referees agreed with our Reply – http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/reply-by-pielke-et-al-to-the-comment-by-parker-et-al-on-our-2007-jgr-paper-unresolved-issues-with-the-assessment-of-multi-decadal-global-land-surface-temperature-trends/.
Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2009: An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841.
Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2010: Correction to: “An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841”, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D1, doi:10.1029/2009JD013655
Indeed, Peter Thorne has a documented history of suppressing other viewpoints as I have documented with e-mails and in a Public Comment; i.e
Pielke, R.A. Sr., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences”. 88 pp including appendices.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/nr-143.pdf
I agree with Anthony Watts that “[a]pprised of it, he says that while ‘a noble effort, it is a reaction to a series of data transparency blunders rather than a proactive approach to open replication.’”
I would also add, that despite the significant involvement of myself and my colleagues in assessing uncertainties and biases with respect to the land surface temperature record in the peer reviewed literature, we were not invited to the Exeter meeting.
For these reasons, I disagree with your statement
“So, while Dr Thorne and his colleagues try to do something that is both difficult and worthwhile in a way that increases transparency, critics outside the community have to date more or less ignored the opportunity to get involved.”
We have very much been involved and Peter Thorne and his associates continue to fail at being inclusive. This meeting looks like “business as usual.
Best Regards
Roger Sr.
Can’t we just summarise this and conclude that were are about to be subjected to another bout of decision-based evidence making?
As a long time subscriber to The Economist, I assure you that they are not in the least bit interested in any opinion other than AGW is a catastrophic fact that must be dealt with severely. The magazine has even compromised its strong suit, economic analysis, to pound away, often irrationally, about global warming. The entire editorial board and the three lead geo-political opinion writers, are hard Obama style leftists, professing reasonableness while proposing draconian solutions, often to imagined problems.
Max Hugoson says:
August 26, 2010 at 9:43 am
“Thus the conclusion: AVERAGE SURFACE TEMPERATURES WITHOUT KNOWLEGE OF MOISTURE ARE MEANINGLESS!”
Fascinating. I genuinely wasn’t aware of the effect of RH on enthalpy (I had to look up the meaning of that word, actually).
So if for every temp measurement there was an RH measurement, would that mean we could map enthalpy distributions temporally and spatially? And if so, what would be the kinds of inferences we could draw from such maps?
This is a genuine question – I am just interested in any comments. TIA.
Peter Thorne says:
August 26, 2010 at 6:38 am
“….In keeping down to a manageable number tough calls were required and there are many folks who will feel they should have been included who aren’t like Roger Pielke Sr. does. This is the primary reason for the blog and I would particularly welcome input to that forum on the specific details discussed within the relevant white papers from Roger Pielke Sr. (needless to say which follow the house rules on comments) who as he states has a publication record in the area….”
From my perspective it wasn’t so much an issue of tough calls as it is that an errors in selecting input to the discussion has been made. Roger Pielke Sr. should not have been but has been excluded. Regardless of whether it was with that specific fundamental intention in mind, Roger Pielke Sr., perhaps the only one who prominently and persistently focuses on the need to expand the scope of deliberations on what constitutes climate, has been excluded from the key meeting that will discuss and determine what is necessary to primarily measure, track and record climate data that focuses almost exclusive on the one preconceived aspect, the calculation of global average temperatures, that has been proven to be spectacularly inadequate for objectively assessing climate trends.
It is illogical to insist that “[t]his is the primary reason for the blog” set up and moderated by Peter Thorne.
Peter Thorne further said: “In conclusion, readers of WUWT have fundamentally two choices. The first is to take pot shots at this effort before its off the ground and make it crash and burn. The second is to pro-actively try and help make it happen and help to focus it by pointing out critical gaps in what exists in the white papers which are there solely as a starting point.”
Aside from that being an ad-hominem attack that the rules of Peter Thorne’s blog would enable him to prevent from being posted at his blog, both of the alternatives pointed out are a result of a confusion of actions and consequences.
It was primarily the presence of WUTW and people like Roger Pielke Sr. and their focus on the failures of the system for global temperature tracking that brought the Exeter meeting into existence. The Exeter meeting is a reaction to the “proactive” actions of WUWT. Peter Thorne not only prevents the messenger from attending the meeting that ostensibly will determine and design the actions necessary for a solution to the problems that the messenger brought to his attention, he besmirches the character of the messenger.
Well I read Prof P.Sr’s message; and then I looked at what Dr. Thorne had to say; and I’m still not sure that I get what it is that they are proposing to do. Evidently it is something to do with looking for heat in the oceans for some reason.
I’m not up enough on the GCMs to understand fully how the GCMs treat heat in the ocean and how they would/could/might/whatever, benefit for more study of the ocean heat.
That might be useful; if only for better weather predictions; excuse me, that’s projections; but I’m not sure of the climate benefits.
I look at that by now well known 600 million year proxy record of earth Temperature and CO2 in the atmosphere; and the most striking thing about those graphs, is the fixed, “do not exceed”, +22 deg C ceiling, that must remain inviolate.
Dare I suggest that something a bit more important than heat hiding in the oceans, is forcing that 22 deg C ceiling on us; despite all that has gone on in that 600 million years, including orbital shifts, and solar output changes in TSI.
Something has remained FIXED for at least 600 million years; so what could it be ?
Well I know what has remained fixed for at least 600 million years, so as to ensure that the + 22 deg C ceiling is not breached; and won’t be breached anytime in the foreseeable future; or any part of it in which humans would have any interest. Even the termites that likely will follow us on the world stage, will not see a breach of that fixed Temperature ceiling.
What has remained fixed for over 600 million years are the Physical and Chemical properties of the H2O molecule, as they are manifested in all three ordinary phases of physical matter.
That is what hasn’t changed through thick and thin, and sea level rises and falls (think of what happened to ocean heat storage then) or earth orbital shifts; or changes in the solar Temperature, and radiant emittance.
So I would neither encourage; nor discourage this effort to learn more about ocean heat; if it helps make the nightly weather report more interesting; but I suspect that it would be more productive in the long run, to study just how the Physical and Chemical properties of WATER VAPOR/WATER/ICE act to regulate via powerful negative feedback the maximum temperature that earth can reach; so long as we still have our oceans.
Hey Dr P.Sr and Dr Thorne; IT’S THE WATER !!
From: WillR on August 26, 2010 at 8:05 am
Start of Link 8:
I right-clicked, saved link as, dropped the pdf on the desktop then opened it. The line numbering appears to be a separate element of the document, if I try to highlight any number I get that and the remaining line numbers and then the text. When I highlight only the text for copying then it works.
However, I am using Debian Linux, a free and open source software product, using the standard included free and open source file viewer that also handles pdf files, Evince Document Viewer, which may be insensitive to security features that “official” programs like Adobe Reader would recognize. You can try to mark the text as I’ve said above, if that doesn’t work you may need a less “official” pdf viewer.
George E. Smith says: August 26, 2010 at 10:54 am
Hey Dr P.Sr and Dr Thorne; IT’S THE WATER !!
How right you are ! In case of this green island (GB) not any water, but the water of the cold North Atlantic.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETnd.htm
Walter Schneider says:
August 26, 2010 at 10:28 am
…Roger Pielke Sr. should not have been but has been excluded…
I totally agree with you and i think this is the kernel of the problem.
These troll-like persons who urge a “light a candle rather than curse the darkness” response, and characteristically use the wrong metaphor, seem to think we’re so psychologically inept that we can’t detect a direct insult if they blow a little smoke around.
Whitewash and/or skulduggery in the making, as usual.
Ron Zelius says:
August 26, 2010 at 9:57 am
“Can’t we just summarise this and conclude that were are about to be subjected to another bout of decision-based evidence making?”
I like that phrase 🙂
WillR on August 26, 2010 at 8:05 am [unquoted]>
Sounds like you’re using Adobe Acrobat Reader – the text selection-for-copying tool is stupidly obscure, but it should be there.
The Adobe selection tool simply does not work for me on the documents — white papers. Maybe it is a version issue in conjunction with the document security. As suggested I will try my Linux Workstation and another reader.
I wanted to add a comment but wanted to quote a short section for clarity. Regardless I will leave the work for others with more time and patience.
Steven Mosher says:
August 26, 2010 at 9:45 am (Edit)
Peter thorne has been accepting my comments since I first found the site.
he puts the choice to people fairly. Make your comments over there. make them constructive. See what they do and judge the results. There are quite a few white papers so put your reading caps on.
take a role, even if you would have done things differently.
So you think we should leave the process in their hands?
When they make it hard to even copy the white papers?
I think they need to publish the raw data first.
Is the raw ARGO data available? I feel like bypassing these… lovely people.
Max Hugoson, I posted a similar comment a few weeks ago. (I think you meant to write Btu/lb, not Btu/ft3.)
I think the whole exercise is a monumental waste of time and money. It was probably invented by Prof. Thorne as a job security project. I don’t think any instrument temperature record, or even an entropy record, is ever going to be accurate enough to tell us how much the earth has warmed over any meaningful time frame. The older data will be far less accurate so that correlation with CO2 output is not going be reasonably possible. Even if it were possible that will tell us nothing about man-caused warming because correlation might sometimes imply causation but it sure doesn’t prove it.
Frankly I’m shocked that Thorne and others, who are PhD scientists, have even suggested such an incredibly silly task. They of all people should know better. Anthony’s surfacestation.org is proof enough that a rejiggering of the instrumental temperature record is never going to yield significant results. I’m sure there are many good climate scientists doing lots of good work but Thorne and anyone else involved in this silly waste of time are not among them. They should go do real science, like studying clouds, ocean/atmosphere heat exchanges, etc.
As I write this, I’m sitting on a balcony in Maui watching the wind kick up white caps on the Pacific and move the cumulus clouds and rain squalls around. The temperature on this balcony varies dramatically on time scales of a few minutes. Ours is a very dynamic climate.
Since a strong El Nino, 1998 for example, can have such a dramatic effect on the thermometer record for the entire atmosphere of the planet (according to all records I’ve seen), how can we make any sense of a thermometer record without having a detailed understanding of those kinds of phenomena? I think we can’t.
“Scientists” like Thorne steal media attention and research funds for their silly projects and, by doing so, impede real research that could actually help us understand our environment. Dr. Pielke Sr. should be pleased that he was not invited to that conference of fools.
dT
” tallbloke says:
August 26, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Is the raw ARGO data available?”
I’m having difficulty getting any results (error) from this link..
http://www.usgodae.org/las/getUI.do
I also don’t believe this is the raw data.
Awhile back I came across this comment on the Australian ABC website:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2626711.htm
“The Argo data is extraordinarily difficult to find on the Internet. There is no official or unofficial website showing the latest ocean temperature. Basically the only way to get the data is to ask Josh Willis (above). The graph above come from Craig Loehle, who got the data from Willis, analysed it, and put the results in a peer reviewed paper available on the Internet. Given the importance of the ocean temperatures, don’t you think this is extraordinary? ”
Not sure where to go from here…
“Not sure where to go from here…”
Except asking Josh Willis (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory), of course.
Walter Schneider says: August 26, 2010 at 10:28 am
Surely this is the heart of the matter.
Peter Thorne, please include Anthony / SurfaceStations collaborators and Pielke, not only in your invitations but also in your most basic planning of what to do in order to make the data easily accessible in its raw form, metadata likewise so that people can make independent informed assessments of corrections needed for UHI; changes of location, instrumentation, and routine; and station microenvironment.
Your invitation and inclusion will do more than anything else to inspire our confidence that you have a realistic desire to restore integrity.
There are only 24 hours in the day. Many people here have good reason to suspect that the above basic factors (UHI etc) have not been dealt with adequately, let alone openly and verifiably. Most of us have had to take precious time out to grasp essentials and check with others who seem to ask similar reasonable questions (ie skeptics), in order to check the basics.
Because of their openness and “back to basics” approaches that avoid impenetrable scientific verbiage, terminology, and paywalls, we have come to trust McKitrick and Pielke, and amateur bloggers and amateur researchers, that UHI etc have not been properly dealt with, and that if dealt with, the “anthropogenic contribution” is shown to be the effect of UHI etc, and any other variation cannot be proven to be anything other than natural variability.
Of course, committment to cleaning up the data should include willingness and ability to scrutinize the best professional contributions. But it should also have an ear to the very challenges that have made you set up this new project to clean up surface stations records – and the valid contributions from these directions, even though they may not have read your white papers or even have the time or the ability to read them.
Tallbloke:
“So you think we should leave the process in their hands?
When they make it hard to even copy the white papers?
I think they need to publish the raw data first.”
1. “leave” the process in their hands? They have opened “their” process to comment. I may not be happy with who they have in their process. I may not be happy with every detail of how they decided to go forward. But they asked for comments, spend your time giving comments. That doesnt preclude you from complaining. You can do both. complain and offer constructive criticism.
2. I have no issue with the white papers.
3. you think “they” need to publish “the” “raw” data?
1. who specifically, many organizations are present
2. which ‘raw’ data
3. there is no such thing as ‘raw’ data. ‘raw’ data is what the thermometer showed.
(even thats not raw since thermometers dont measure “temperature” )
the best we can have is a written record of what an observer wrote down. In the case of electronic monitoring the best you have is the data that was recieved. not the instrument reading, but rather the data that the reciever thinks the instrument sent to it.
4. They are defining a protocal for publishing the data they have. weigh in and comment.
HR says:
August 26, 2010 at 4:32 am
Does all this matter little given that the satellite data seems to match the instrument record for the passed couple of decades?
It’s the adjustments to the earlier part of the record which matter more. Something which won’t be addressed by this sideshow.
WillR and others homogenization is a level 5 data product. You cannot stop people from homogenizing data. you cant stop then from filtering, smoothing, eliminating errors. What you can do is demand accountability and auditing of every step. As long as you have access to level 0 through level 4, what a researcher does at level 5 is a choice.
papers download fine:
Inhomogeneities in temperature records can arise for a wide variety of reasons (for a
broad review of these see Trewin (2010)). The process of creating a homogenised
dataset from the databank involves two principal stages: the detection of
inhomogeneities (also known as changepoints or shifts) in the data, and making
adjustments to remove those inhomogeneities and create a homogeneous dataset. For
some applications only detection is required, with users making their own judgements
about adjustments (if any). The extent to which users wish to remove inhomogeneities may also vary depending on the application: for example, in detection of global climate change signals, it is desirable to remove any inhomogeneities arising from urbanisation, but some users may be explicitly interested in anomalous local trends arising from urban growth. “
Have you seen this? Satellite Temperature Record Now Unreliable Charles Anderson over at the Objective Individualist has been studying satellite records and found some real doozies of errors, such as that parts of Lake Michigan are boiling. Apparently he has dragged some grudging admission of satellite errors from NOAA, but they’re keeping it close to the chest.
Steven Mosher says: August 26, 2010 at 3:12 pm
They have opened “their” process to comment.
… they asked for comments,…
So did the EPA.
If WUWT takes this seriously and the posters can make meaningful contributions to the ideas for how to clean up the data mess, there will be plenty of time later to gripe and complain if they don’t implement those suggestions or dismiss them out of hand. As a nightly reader of the blog (but just an average person, not educated in the higher exercises of the mathematics, statistics, etc. though I have read The CruTape Letters twice and get more out of it each time) I would love to see some solid, reasonable, and scientifically sound ideas from WUWT, and the other blogs, for how to proceed. It sounds like they are proposing to look at both the historical records, as well as the records going forward (“going into dusty rooms” kind of thing) so if we have access to those records as they stand, we should be able to go over them as see what is being done to them. Here’s our chance… sure, we wish that our guys were invited to the team in the first place, but let’s give them a little time and input and see what they do with it. For all we know, they are recognizing that the warming trend has already stopped, and this is their way of getting out of the tangle that they are in… the wasted money is going to be blamed on something, it might as well be those sloppy past adjustments.
Jeff says:
August 26, 2010 at 6:31 am
That is the whole point Jeff. Even with all the filling-in, missing data points, homogenization and on and on and on the instrumant record still matchs the satellite record for the past few decades. Quite amazing really given you think it’s essentially been made up.
Mark says:
August 26, 2010 at 6:05 am
I take your point that there are still question marks over the historical record beyond the satellite era but it seems hard to know how to retrospectively solve that problem. Sounds like a trawl through a mountain of paper records, something I imagine has already been done to generate the present data sets.
tallbloke says:
August 26, 2010 at 2:14 pm
“Is the raw ARGO data available? I feel like bypassing these… lovely people.”
I am, surprised that the ARGO data gets such little attention. Does anyone have plots that go up to 2010?
It would be a valuable project for one of WUWT skilled posters to plot the data?
I got the impression that the NASA folks were disapointed since it does not show warming of the oceans and they decided to “adjust” or hide the data.
Everybody says its all about the Oceans, yet the ARGO data is supressed?
Is it included in the GISS?
Or am I mistaken, What am I missing?
A graph of the ARGO data is here: http://www-argo.ucsd.edu/nino3_4_atlas.gif
Don’t know if it’s raw or not but its sure not getting hotter.
dT