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)
Having a look at a previous paper by Dr Gergis.
“On the long-term context of the 1997–2009 ‘Big Dry’ in South-Eastern Australia: insights from a 206-year multi-proxy rainfall reconstruction”
http://climatehistory.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Gergis_Climatic_Change_2011.pdf
We can get an idea of her methods thus:
…variability is represented by the unfiltered monthly IPO anomaly normalised to a 1911–
1995 base period averaged over a May–April year and smoothed with an 11-year running mean.
Lots of cherry picking ? 11 yr running mean . May-April year ?
Streetcred says:
May 17, 2012 at 1:36 pm
She is also a climate hypocrite [according to her bio]:
She is an avid world traveller has who has visited 24 countries.
undoubtedly spewing carbon dioxide to get to each and every one since she lives in Australia.
The beauty of this new Alarmist pronouncement is that it comes against a backdrop of persistently cooler/cold weather in Eastern Australia. It is ‘meant’ to reinforce the fundamental Truth of Warmism and strengthen the resolve of the Faithful…but in reality it is having the opposite effect, namely eroding belief in Warmism.
Being told that Australia is warming up when you’re piling on extra sweaters and worrying about paying your heating bill is simply a sign that the ‘Story’ has losts its spin and is falling like a stone!
Pre-disposition quotient a little on the high side perhaps. Initial questimate is 42.
@dukeofurl
and if you look at table 2 in that paper, NOT ONE of the longer term proxies is in the area they are studying.. the closest being in Tassie, which has totally different climate drivers.
DOH !!!
Manuscript: http://web.science.unsw.edu.au/~sjphipps/publications/gergis2012.pdf
“so What do they do Steve ? keep quiet ?”
That would be my suggestion. It is also my practice 99%+ of the time.
The one infelicity of WUWT is that sometimes the signal to noise ratio isn’t as high as it might be. (n.b. I am not saying that about your comment, Optimist.)
Not to worry. If the paper is flawed, somebody here will have the goods on it within a couple of days.
Well who would have guessed that there is thousand year old ice in Australia. I’d be very interested to see this paper.
Not much post-1998 data … if any.
Ally E. says:
May 17, 2012 at 1:36 pm
You must be a way inland or high up. Here in Sydney it is not getting below 8C at night, and gets to 21 or 22C in the day, which is a degree or two above normal for this time of year.
The summer, however, was a complete bust, as is normal with El Nina, especially twice in a row. I’m off to the tropics to live later in the year. I’ve had enough of winters.
The conclusion that the increrase is “highly unusual and cannot be explained by natural factors alone” may be correct.
Given the quality of the data against which her comparisons rest. Changes in Land use / Land cover are still in the mix as possible explanations.
The “it’s unusual, so it must be unnatural” kind of conclusion isn’t very scientific. Rather like: “We can’t think of anything else, so it must be CO2”.
Greg O’Donnell, on May 17, 2012 at 2:06 pm, said: “… 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?”
Consider yourself corrected. As Steven said, you need to look at the methodologies, code, etc. Then you can make statements about their models’ validity. You haven’t shown that their models “ignore some natural factors”. JP
Anthony, if you look in the tips and notes section I posted about this article yesterday and included a link to an archive with the actual paper for your interest.
Once again, a model (ok 3000 models) couldn’t explain why temperatures increased, so it must have been CO2! The 20PPM in the atmosphere put there by humans have outwrestled the oceans and overcome the atmospheric H2O, which account for most of the other GHG’s. How? We don’t know, but CO2 did it, and we are sure it was CO2 because we couldn’t find any natural causes for it. I personally think it was the 20 PPB of methane from cow farts (/sarc), but I can’t prove that either even if I run 3000 simulations. Why even give this garbage any consideration at all?
Unfrozencaveman:
The end of that paper is a hockey-stick rich environment!
Mooney in the article was implying that blog scientists are the guerrillas, waging an asymmetrical war against real scientists that don’t want to fight, but just work on their research.
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.
————–
Looks like the scientist’s interpretation of the “science is settled” phrase is quite different from the meaning you guys use when you apply it as a taunt.
They are still in there beavering away to check and verify and refine everything.
I have not yet analysed the paper and as such have no opinion on its quality. However two thoughts occur from reading the above:
– > “scientists have used 27 natural climate records”
When did “temperature proxies” become “natural climate records”? The latter term seems to imply much more certainty than the former.
– > “Our study revealed that recent warming in a 1000 year context is
– > highly unusual and cannot be explained by natural factors alone …”
1000 years is not long in geological time. Even if the statement can be sustained (on which I must confess a certain scepticism) it seems unreasonable to infer that “not in the last 1000 years” means “never”.
The problem for the self declared Guerilla science authors would be to explain, why every single Hockey Stick paper tells the opposite story, once their errors are corrected, and the high quality reconstructions, such as Bond or Mangini, of course, support just the opposite as well.
CRUTEM3 SH is now around .4C below 1998 which is around when all the proxies ended.
I think we can agree as of 2011 in the SH ( according to this proxy reconstruction ), it is definitely colder than the MWP.
They admit there are uncertainties in their predictions into the future. Does this mean they are admitting to uncertainties in the consensus of climate change?
A temperature minimum was reached about 750 (AD) in the Dark Ages, from which it warmed to the peak in the Middle Ages warming period about 1100AD. There was a slight cooling about 980 to 1030 (similar or alike to the 1940-1975 dip).
To compare Apples with apples and oranges with Oranges, perhaps it be reasonable to compare those 350 years with a run from about 1690 AD (the coldest part of the Little Ice Age) to 2010 (“the hottest year ever” !) —or about 320 years, these being roughly equivalent. How would the two match? Would “man’s fingerprint” be quite so indelibly inscribed?
The years compared seem to be a bit out of step with the past record, so the trend may also be out of sync.
I have only a few questions. The first being how did Dr. Gregis pick the 27 records? There were quite a few more that the ones that they used. What method did she use? How did she arrive at her conclusions without cherry picking?
Secondly, much of Austrailia lies in the tropical South Pacific. Yet, the IPCC says that in the tropics, AGW’s signal is aloft and not at the surface. How can Gregis square this circle? Has the physics of AGW changed?
Thirdly, how sure is she that her tree-ring proxies reflect changes in temperature and not precipitation or CO2 fertilization? Will we have to wait for another layman a la Steve McKintyre to uncover the problems with certain proxies?
Other than that, the paper looks interesting. I wonder how many of the proxies can be used to chart changes in ENSO? Has anyone done any conclusive work with any of these proxies and ENSO?
Finally, there is the Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand. I wonder if any of these proxies can match the waxing and waning of the glacier. As far as I know, the Franz Josef Glacier growth and decay mirrored the LIA fairly well.
Weather Channel declines to join the current season of Australian Government sponsored climate fear propaganda: