From the University of Melbourne, I’m sure Julia and Flannery are thrilled at this paleo-reconstruction, and of course, the blame goes on Mann, er man. I find it interesting though that the lead author, Dr Joelle Gergis, thinks of her science work as a “guerrilla war”. From “Science Matters”:
Seems like just another angry Michael Mann clone to me.
At the outset of this project in 2010, they said:
Australian climate scientist Professor Chris Turney from the University of Exeter, UK says this meeting will allow us to place Australian records in a global context and gives us an opportunity to fully understand natural climate variability.
Yet in the current press release, the phrase “natural climate variability” is not mentioned. WUWT?
1,000 years of climate data confirms Australia’s warming
In the first study of its kind in Australasia, scientists have used 27 natural climate records to create the first large-scale temperature reconstruction for the region over the last 1000 years.
The study was led by researchers at the University of Melbourne and used a range of natural indicators including tree rings, corals and ice cores to study Australasian temperatures over the past millennium and compared them to climate model simulations.
Lead researcher, Dr Joelle Gergis from the University of Melbourne said the results show that there are no other warm periods in the last 1000 years that match the warming experienced in Australasia since 1950.
“Our study revealed that recent warming in a 1000 year context is highly unusual and cannot be explained by natural factors alone, suggesting a strong influence of human-caused climate change in the Australasian region,” she said.
The study published today in the Journal of Climate will form the Australasian region’s contribution to the 5th IPCC climate change assessment report chapter on past climate.
She said using what is known as ‘palaeoclimate’ or natural records, such as tree rings, corals and ice cores, are fundamental in evaluating regional and global climate variability over centuries before direct temperature records started in 1910.
Dr Gergis collated these natural records provided by decades of work by more than 30 researchers from Australia, New Zealand and around the world.
The reconstruction was developed using 27 natural climate records calculated in 3000 different ways to ensure that the results were robust.
She said reconstructions of regional temperature not only provide a climate picture of the past but also a significant platform to reduce uncertainties associated with future climate variability.
The study is part of a global collaboration, PAGES, Past Global Changes Regional 2K initiative, which is working to reconstruct the last 2000 years of climate across every region in the world in order to reduce uncertainties associated with future climate change projections.
Collaborators include the Climate Change Research Centre and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, University of New South Wales where the climate modeling was conducted.
###
The study was funded by the Australian Research Council, Federal Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and Past Global Changes (PAGES).
Of course, in true Mannian form, the press release has no link to the actual paper. We aren’t supposed to look to closely at this things don’t you know?
And, searching the JoC journal index of the most recent issue shows no mention of this paper, so it must have just been accepted. Does anybody have a copy of this in part or full?
UPDATE: via Marc Hendrickx, thanks.
Briefing powerpoint presentation (PDF)
First things first. Everyone understand this: there is nothing wrong with the climate.
It was the bullshit and fully debunked hockey stick that implied that there was something wrong. There is nothing wrong.
Mosher is right….BUT
People see a great wrong, they are not scientists. They are not as capable as Mosher, with regards to the data or the code,
they dont like the tone or the approach or the tenor of the alarmists
or they have an objection to alarmism
so What do they do Steve ? keep quiet ? cheer from the sidelines ? make funnies ?
what would you have them do ?
It seems to me that this report confirms the existence of the medieval warm period affecting australia 1000 years ago. Why dont they report that to the IPCC?
The “Last thousand years” is a hockey stick meme in research, whatever happened in Australia in that time will be connected to the same patterns of El Nins as South America, as far as I’m getting to grips with the subject, and there’s lots of research already done which should have this, such as: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/quelcoro.htm
“Coropuna is located on the first rise of the Andes, right above the Pacific Ocean, so the ice cores should record changes in the El Nino-La Nina cycle, a key component of climate variability.”
steven mosher says:May 17, 2012 at 11:57 am
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Gergis is just another socialist environmental shill on the teat of the public purse.
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/
All I can tell you is that its getting colder here in NSW. We’re not officially into winter yet but we’ve been getting frosts on and off over the last two months. This morning, as I type, it’s -5.5 C. (around 20 F, I believe) and the countryside is white with frost. I don’t know how long they can keep insisting it’s getting warmer when it clearly and obviously is not.
” … calculated in 3000 different ways to ensure that the results were robust.” As Dr. Goebbels used to say, a lie repeated 1000 times becomes a truth. Now we get a triple-truth.
seems to be a wiggling of words too…..
“The findings show that no other period in the last 1,000 years matches the temperature rises Australia and the region has experienced in the last 50 years.”
“the results show that there are no other warm periods in the last 1000 years that match the warming experienced in Australasia since 1950.”
No periods would match the “rises”…only half of that 1000 years would temps be rising…and each “period” would start with a lower temp and end with a lower temp….
No warm periods would match the “warming”……for the same reason….starting at a lower temp and warming to a lower temp
The first 500 years were falling into the LIA….the last 500 were rising from the LIA
I don’t see any reason to debate the “science” at all….
“The study was led by researchers at the University of Melbourne and used a range of natural indicators including tree rings, ”
Tree rings? Really? Australia has boreal forests? The theory tree rings MIGHT be more temps than water budget meters only was surmised to apply to tree-line flora. That’s why bristlecones and trees at Yamal in Siberia are looked at. Is this Australian study a new avenue in climate science??
Thevauthors are interviewed at this link http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/climate-research-shows-human-caused-warming/4016322
A statement made in the interview is “We used climate modeling to actually look at what the drivers of climate are, and by using the modeling, we were able to show that lateral factors alone cannot explain the warming that we saw during the 21st century.” correct me if I am wrong, but doesn’t this mean that they use models which ignore some natural factors to prove that the model they are using is correct?
On the other hand, the following seems to indicate that New Zealand was about 0.7 C warmer during the MWP as in 1950.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/the-medieval-warm-period-a-global-phenonmena-unprecedented-warming-or-unprecedented-data-manipulation/
“Lead researcher, Dr Joelle Gergis from the University of Melbourne said the results show that there are no other warm periods in the last 1000 years that match the warming experienced in Australasia since 1950. ”
————–
At JoNova:
“A team of independent engineers, scientists, statisticians and data analysts (brought together by the joannenova blog) has been going through the Australia Bureau of Meteorology records (BOM). They’ve audited some 8.5 million daily observations across 237 High Quality and other close sites in Australia.
“This audit of a large sample of daily temperature observations at all sites associated with Australia’s High Quality Temperature Network provides convincing evidence that the record is of very poor quality and is replete with errors.
“The large amount of uncertainty in the records of so many sites means that homogenisation as practised by BOM researchers must be in question, and with it all analyses of Australia’s temperature trends plus the calibration of past proxy studies. ”
Best to read the whole post here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/03/australian-temperature-records-shoddy-inaccurate-unreliable-surprise/
Looking thru the metadatabase that Mosher linked, the breakdown appears to be approx. 50%+ tree ring proxies, 40%+ coral proxies, and 5%+ marine sediments. The Idsos have also assembled a database of proxy studies which includes the study area involved here.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
The differences in format and nomenclature make it difficult to determine which studies may be included in both but the proxy types included suggests the overlap will not be large. Since the Idsos database is admittedly focused on studies which indicate a warmer MWP, if those studies have indeed been excluded, systematically or otherwise, it would raise questions, in my mind at least, of just how dedicated these authors were to developing a true record.
There could be a major problem with this study. Most of the data are from New Zealand tree-ring studies and we must remember the problems that NIWA got themselves into with its “Seven-station Series”.
It would be interesting to see a comparison between New Zealand’s tree ring record from this study and the recent re-analysis of New Zealand’s Temperature Record
They should have tried the last 12,000 years. Minoan & Roman inconvenience.
It must be co2! Why? We can’t think of anything else. Where is the evidence?
Found the link to the paper: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00649.1
Whoops! I forgot to include the ice core studies in my breakdown, which would reduce the coral studies from 40% to approx 30% with the ice cores accounting for approx 10%.
It is worth noting that the commencement of the temperature record in Australia in 1910 is when the (then recently established) Australian Bureau of Meteorology commenced its records. It is not the case that there are now prior records — just that they are dismissed as unreliable. The official records therefore miss the ‘Federation Drought’ that followed the formation of the Australian Federation in 1901.
I think there is always need for caution when the basis of data changes, especially if we do not have continuity, but it would be interesting to see what the actually temperature records before 1910 say. Species like Huon Pine are particularly slow growing, and I’m not sure how sensitive they are to temperature (as opposed, eg, to moisture). It would seem strange to prefer them as temperature proxies when actual observations are available, regardless of problems in the observational data.
David Middleton: Interesting analysis, but why Hobart Airport? Wouldn’t Hobart have a longer record? Are there not stations close to Mt Read (eg Strahan)? How long do they stretch back?
Whilst (there it is again, Anthony) this ‘research’ may have some value I have 2 questions:
1. shouldn’t we wait for the peer review process to grind through its laborious processes before accepting this as a forward step in knowledge? I offer:
“None of the experts who have scrutinized the specimens and the gravel pit and its surroundings has doubted the genuineness of the discovery.”
— William Gregory, in Natural History reporting on the Piltdown Man fossils
2. so what if our temps are on the rise? Flim Flammery’s (an Australian Climate Change Commissioner with 180,000 climastrophic reasons per year) prognostications have all failed and, as the 60 years of warming since 1950 haven’t swept Oz into the sea, why will the next 50 or a 100 do so?
The climate (funding) is very, very sensitive…..
I’m getting tired of this virtual gaia crap
Ally E. says:
May 17, 2012 at 1:36 pm
All I can tell you is that its getting colder here in NSW. We’re not officially into winter yet but we’ve been getting frosts on and off over the last two months. This morning, as I type, it’s -5.5 C. (around 20 F, I believe) and the countryside is white with frost. I don’t know how long they can keep insisting it’s getting warmer when it clearly and obviously is not.
Ally, don’t you know that cold temperatures are only “weather” and warm temperatures are manmade climate change? /s
I wonder if they included this study from NZ.
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Wilson-1979.html
She was coauthor with Neukom in an article last year on SH proxies, cited in AR5. Much of the data is not archived. I asked Neukom and he told me to suck eggs.
http://climateaudit.org/2012/01/19/neukom-and-the-steig-overunder/
http://climateaudit.org/2011/01/06/more-data-refusal-nothing-changes/
http://pages-igbp.org/download/docs/Neukom_Gergis_2011.pdf
hmm.. the last 50 years..
all the previous period was constructed from proxies, but how was the last 50 years constructed..
From land temp measurements (often affected by urbanisation., have they accounted properly for that.. I doubt it very much.. the AGW bretheren never do)
do they maintain tree proxies.. if they have, do they correct for the rise in the CO2 level, which make tree much more efficient..
Oh , and, What errors range are they claiming for their temperature reconstruction ?
I did my PhD in an Australian University would not trust an Australian Scientist as far as I could throw him/her especiailly an environmentalist