This is something that needs wider circulation, hence its appearance here. I’ve been mulling over how to best present this, and decided there’s nothing I could do in the way of excerpts that still told the story effectively, so I decided to present it in full. I’m pretty sure Jeff won’t mind. Readers may recall Steig et al 2009 and its cover picture on Nature saying the whole of Antarctica is warming, and the skeptic response paper O’Donnel et al 2010 response demonstrating conclusively that the peninsula is warming, but the whole of the continent is not. The reason for this is the same flawed PCA flawed statistical methodology, similar to what was used by Mann to create the Hockey Stick. Jeff Condon, co-author of O’Donnell et al 2010 tells the story at his Air Vent blog. Andrew Montford also has a post on it where he opines about the Steig et al 2009 paper possibly being included in IPCC AR5. – Anthony
Posted by Jeff Condon
I know you guys missed me, Real Climate sure did. Eric Steig has written a letter to “The Guardian” (booming voice) in response to a Nic Lewis letter patiently explaining problems in an article written by yet-another-know-nothing with a keyboard. Unfortunately for us, the article itself has been updated in response so we can’t read the original. What is interesting about the exchange is Dr. Steig’s wild reply.
My bold.
Nicholas Lewis (Letters, 28 August) complained that your report (Arctic ice melt likely to break record, 24 August) gave the impression that typical temperatures in Antarctica have risen as much as on the Antarctic peninsula.
While he is correct about this, his letter also refers to an outdated study of his, which argued that previous estimates of overall Antarctic warming were too high. In fact, the work of Lewis and co-authors has been proven wrong.
The relevant paper here is Orsi et al, Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 39, 2012, which shows that the rate of warming in west Antarctica is as great, or greater, than what we showed in our original work (Steig et al, Nature, vol. 457, 2009). Moreover, Lewis’s own paper shows there has been
significant warming in west Antarctica and that the average trend over Antarctica is of warming, not cooling as is often stated.
The reality is that the Antarctic is warming up and is contributing significantly to sea level rise; and that there is strong potential for a greater contribution to sea level rise from Antarctica in the future.
Professor Eric Steig
University of Washington, Seattle, USA
Our 2010 study is now outdated???
Seriously!! This absolutely is the doctor who never learned about matlab.
For those who have not read the history of the Antarctic wars, here is a pictorial summary.
Steig said this on the cover of Nature magazine:
We said, no you screwed up the math so using the same data it is more like this: (Ryan O’Donnel)
Because without the satellites the temperature stations alone say this:
So it absolutely cannot be the image on the right:
Steig 09 smeared the peninsula warming across the continent (see how it is missing from the peninsula on the left), but now he says O10 has been “proven” wrong. This tells me that he has apparently never understood that the result we produced is nothing more than thermometer data. That is all it is.
Temperatures as reported by thermometers. It is a skeptic plot I tell you!!
Perilously, Steig 09 was precociously printed on the previously prestigious primary page of Nature publication. Carelessly comprised of contaminated and crappy satellite data with thermometers taking a tertiary role in tolling temperature. Sorrily, Steig’s seminal segment was further stuffed by sloppy math. (alitteral too far?)
So Jeff , what did he base his conclusion that the PCA distributed thermometers of O10 are now “outdated” and “proven wrong” on?
A single borehole temperature reconstruction at a single point……
One spot
—-> o <—-
Genius!!
It was workmanship like that which got me labeled as a skeptic in the first place.
Notes to Real Climate and Orsi:
The PCA method S09 attempted to employ, is about redistribution of thermometer information according to covariance of AVHRR satellite data. By nature, every temperature station affects every point in the reconstruction. Kriging the temp stations, is a far more controlled and far more verifiable solution for the same thing and it would produce the same result as O10. The 3 pc’s of the Steig 09 method “smeared” the thermometer data everywhere, so no matter what is published, S09 methods will NEVER be verified. S09 can never, and will never, be correct….because it isn’t! The fact that it is to be cited in AR5 is yet another wart on the last few grains of credibility the IPCC holds.
Sorry for that.
Does the error of S09 that mean that O10 is right? No, of course not. But O10 is very close to actual thermometer results. This is because in a “skeptic” plot, we cleverly used actual thermometers. Bunch of morons I say. This is in direct contrast to S09 which preferred 3 pc’s of highly noisy Satellite AVHRR data WHEREVER available. That was not a smart plan ….. Um, if you want good results.
Even with enough pc’s as O10 used, there are points in this sort of reconstruction with noisy data, where modes of the PC are a dominant factor in creating the local trends of the plot. These methods mean that station information can be and IS copied across an entire continent. This was proven by the S09 cover of nature(Figure 1 above). The trick is to minimize the information bleeding. What this means to me is that I am quite comfortable that the O10 reconstruction will never be proven wrong, not because something as massive and complex as o10 doesn’t contain a boo-boo, but rather because it is an approximation of a field. The best anyone will ever do — is improve on it.
Apparently, this is something that Steig has never figured out. He might not ever work it out, but science is a cold sport and my guess is that those who are smarter than him ….. will.
===
Other notes of surprise:
What normal thinking person would take a temperature from a lousy borehole and hold that out as superior to an actual thermometer?
???????
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\”Dr Burns says:
September 8, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Sounds like arguing whether my house is warming or cooling when the temperatures of the oven, hotplates and refrigerator are included.\”
Yes, that is exactly right. Now try and establish the average temperature of your house, including all of the above, relying on thermometers placed near the oven, and establish the historic averages by taking a single core from a wooden door in the basement to come up with a proxy.
Show that the proxy was about -20 deg 50 years ago, ignoring common sense, and that the current temperatures are about +20 deg, extrapolate exponentially 100 years into the future, and announce to your family that you should be able to cook dinners 5 years from now using ambient temperature inside your house, which by then be hot enough to melt steel…
Reblogged this on shadowvigil.
Thanks Anthony and everyone. There were a few questions about Orsi’s support of Steig.
This quote is in the conclusion of Orsi:
“This record also confirms the work of Steig et al.
[2009], showing that WAIS Divide has been warming by
0.23 0.08 C per decade over 1957–2007 C.E.”
Which is what earned him an honorable mention in the post. Just because nonsense math resulted in a similar slope to other nonsense math, doesn’t mean it confirms anything.
Rob Dekker says:
September 9, 2012 at 2:32 am
Rob, I was referring to the original news article Nic commented on and is linked in “yet another know nothing”. Perhaps I missed something but below is a quote from the article:
“• This article was amended on 24 August 2012 to restore to the start of the penultimate paragraph the words “Research published in Nature today”, which had been lost in the editing process, and to clarify that the research was about temperatures in the Antarctic peninsula.”
News from the Arctic, too:
Arctic ice cap is “heading for oblivion.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19496674
Jeff: If I am reading the colors right, your paper gives a 0.25 deg/decade warming (yellow) in the area of the WAIS Divide. (79 deg S, 112 deg W)
Steig shows 0.5 degree/decade in his (red).
This also matches fairly well with my back of the envelope calculations, above.
Orsi shows your paper to be correct, not Steigs!
Try this at home. Squint your eyes, tilt your head (best after a night of heavy drinking) and you can almost see the growth rings in the boreholes. Presto ——All of Antarctica is Warming
Les, I haven’t tried it with the actual data but you may be right.
Speaking of “boreholes” Peter Gorrie took the 2007 prize.
Gorrie: Arctic discovery confirms impact of global warming
Published on Friday August 06, 2010
HMS Investigator doomed in the pack ice of Mercy Bay, 1850, as painted by ship’s officer Samuel Gurney Cresswell.
Image
By Peter Gorrie Environment Columnist
It’s no wonder Ottawa won’t do anything to reduce climate change. The warming Earth has made a dream come true for federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice.
“I’m elated,” Prentice is reported to have exclaimed when informed HMS Investigator, a British ship that sank 155 years ago while searching for Sir John Franklin’s doomed Northwest Passage expedition, had been found in the cold western Arctic Ocean.
Parks Canada staff had no trouble finding the well-preserved remains of the 400-tonne vessel with the ocean ice-free this summer — a situation first reported only in 2007.
Prentice is apparently an Investigator buff, and reviewed a book about its unsuccessful voyage last winter. Had the ocean remained frozen, the ship would continue to rest unseen, 11 metres below the surface.
Climate change will unseal many other Arctic treasures over the next few years. Most important — less romantic but incomparably more lucrative than an old boat — are oil and gas deposits.
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/843898–gorrie-arctic-discovery-confirms-impact-of-global-warming
So HMS Investigator has always been frozen in ice?
Recent news which reminded Gorrie’s piece.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/09/07/f-franklin-search.html
2010 Prize
Correction ↑
Recent news which reminded me of Gorrie’s piece.
I’m OT but bear with me.
“Even though it’s not terribly deep, it’s only 20, 30 sometimes upwards of 50 metres in the areas we’ve been looking, the ice doesn’t seem to be getting down that deep and significantly affecting the seafloor,” says Harris.
“So a wreck in that area would probably stand to be very well preserved, perhaps perfectly intact like the wreck of Investigator.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/09/07/f-franklin-search.html
vukcevic says:
September 8, 2012 at 8:50 am
Antarctic ice cover rising, solar magnetic activity falling, any connection?
Still trying to understand what mechanism can be responsible and what consequences for the Antarctic and S. Hemisphere temperature might be.
=============
The solar wind entering the atmosphere at the magnetic poles is the mechanism. Where is the evidence that this is simply co-incidence?
The paleo records clearly show that climate change is associated with changes to the earth’s magnetic field. We are in a period of very rapid change in the magnetic field. We are experiencing climate change.
A much stronger case can be made that CO2 and climate change is simply coincidence, because the paleo records show that CO2 lags temperature.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 8, 2012 at 2:29 pm
But that hardly matters when the correlation is spurious to begin with. As I said many a time, a spurious correlation does not need explanation or closer examination
========
Whether a correlation is spurious or not cannot be determined without examination. Many correlations have been proclaimed to be spurious in the past, by very knowledgeable and learned people, only to later have been found to be due to cause and effect.
Continental drift, Milankovitch cycles for example. The problem is that our mathematics is extremely weak when analyzing non-linear interactions, making it extremely difficult to establish cause and effect for non-linear multivariate problems.
Unless spurious correlations are examined in light of new knowledge, history shows that many scientific discoveries will be missed. What may appear spurious today may simply be an artifact of our limited understanding.
@richcar 1225
“Antarctica is currently one giant anti cyclone on steroids. The SAM index is near a record high meaning the interior plateau is at record cold and high pressure compared to the sub tropics resulting in Katabatic westerly winds (coriolis efffect) roaring around the continent dragging the circumpolar current with it resulting in record upwelling at the Polar front which is resulting in the coldest Southern ocean since 1980.”
I am not sure if you saw the paper I referenced on the South Pole temperature, for Kevin the warmist on another thread. The air temperature on the ground is strongly affected by the surface wind speed. As the air temperature rises with altitude additional stirring raises the temperature recorded on the surface.
This means that the surface temperature may be nothing more than a good proxy for the wind speed, not a particularly good source of knowledge about melting or warming.
This means all the authors could claim that all lower temps are cause by lower wind speeds or all higher temps are caused by higher speeds. Similar arguments are available regarding top-of-ocean temperatures on the peninsula and the adjacent land. The only thing that seems to be sure is that the overall ice volume on land is increasing especially in the east.
If the low winds persist in the center the temperatures will continue to remain lower than the historical average, whether or not there is any polar amplification. I agree with the comment that the IPCC says both poles will warm, according to their understanding – a prognostication clearly at variance with reality .
“What it shares with PCA is that it is an iterative refinement method, a gradient descent fitting method, honing in on an answer by reducing error terms at each iteration.”
I almost stopped reading right there. Anyone who writes “honing in” when he means “homing in” is guilty of sloppy thinking at best. Is it unreasonable of me to suspect sloppy thinking elsewhere?
With all this O’Donnell chest beating and Steig bashing going around here at WUWT, may I humbly point out that borehole temperatures are highly smoothed by diffusion, and the farther back in time, the greater the diffusion. In the case of Orsi et al, the most accurate and unambiguous part of their reconstruction is that past 20 years (since 1990) over which Orsi et al shows a whopping +0.75 C/decade temperature rise on the WAIS divide, consistent with Byrd station data.
richardscourtney said
Richard, are deliberately vague or did you accidentally forget to point out where exactly in the UN IPCC WG 1 reports “it” is shown that the Arctic and Antarctic show the same polar amplification ? If you can’t find it in AR4 and have to go all the way back to AR 1 or AR 2, that’s fine. But at least present your evidence rather than handwaving at “plots of climate model ‘projections’”.
Jeff Condon said :
Maybe you should use Orsi et al data, Jeff. That borehole is right in the area where O’Donnell et al had only a single station to work with within a 1000 km radius : Byrd.
Reconstructions of the WAIS divide temperature trend are seriously hampered by a lack of station data.
In fact, the station at Byrd (80°S, 120°W) is the only one around that area, and for that becomes crucial in determining trends for the WAIS divide and the West Antarctic in general.
To make matters worse, since Byrd actually consists of two temporarily non-overlapping stations (separated by a decade of no data) the main factor that determines the trend at Byrd is how you calculate the offset between the two stations.
Raw data trend (assuming no offset between the two stations) obtains +0.38 C/decade and Monaghan et al obtained +0.32 C/decade at the Byrd location.
Steig et al used AVHRR satellite data to calculate the offset, and came up with a +0.25 C/decade trend at Byrd.
O’Donnell used trends at the closest nearby stations (which were about 1000 miles away) and came up with a +0.08 C/decade trend at Byrd.
Since the difference in trend at Byrd is so important for the determination of WAIS and West Antarctica reconstructions, the issue of Byrd became a major point of contention between O’Donnell and Steig :
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/west-antarctica-still-warming-2/
Now Orsi et al drilled a borehole fairly close to Byrd (at 79.5°S, 112°W), and they obtain a trend of about +0.3 C/decade at their location. And, as I mentioned before, Orsi et al shows most (if not all) of that warming to occur since 1990 (as did Steig’s analysis).
So, Jeff, since the offset calculated for the Byrd old and new stations is so important in reconstructing WAIS and West Antarctic temperature fields, and O’Donnell et al had no station nearby to calibrate the offset at Byrd, maybe it would be a good idea to enter the Orsi et al data in O’Donnell’s method (as if it is a new station with a 50 year uninterrupted record), and see how if that changes the reconstructed temperature field, the trends, the uncertainties and maybe even the conclusions of the O’Donnell paper.
Wouldn’t that be an interesting thing to try, Jeff ?
Rob Dekker:
You made an untrue assertion in the form of a question that I answered. So, having been shown to be wrong, at September 10, 2012 at 1:39 am you provide the usual response of a warmist when exposed as having presented a falsehood: i.e you lie and smear with innuendo.
I wrote
Your response says
Moderator:
In my recent reply to Rob Dekker I have used a [START of block quote] where I intended an [END of block quote].
My mistake is after the sentence
But at least present your evidence rather than handwaving at “plots of climate model ‘projections’”.
In addition to spoiling the formatting of my post, I fear it may affect formatting of subsequent posts. Sorry.
I would be grateful if you were to correct my mistake.
Richard
Rob Dekker wrote:
“So, Jeff, since the offset calculated for the Byrd old and new stations is so important in reconstructing WAIS and West Antarctic temperature fields, and O’Donnell et al had no station nearby to calibrate the offset at Byrd, maybe it would be a good idea to enter the Orsi et al data in O’Donnell’s method (as if it is a new station with a 50 year uninterrupted record), and see how if that changes the reconstructed temperature field, the trends, the uncertainties and maybe even the conclusions of the O’Donnell paper. ”
As I wrote earlier, the Orsi reconstruction trend for the 20 years to 2007 is 0.80 deg.C/decade. Satellite AVHRR temperature measurements exist for that period and – although they also are inaccurate – can be used as a check on Orsi’s trend . Steig’s own cloudmasked AVHRR data (ending one year earlier) shows post 1986 trends of 0.15 and 0.12 deg.C/decade for the two grid cells closest to Orsi’s borehole- a fraction of Orsi’s 0.80 deg.C/decade estimate. That does not give one any confidence in the accuracy of Orsi’s temperature reconstruction. Nor does the fact that he compared his results with those in a AVHRR grid cell that, although near the WAIS divide, was neither the grid cell containing his borehole nor the adjoining grid cell with the closest border thereto.
The AVHRR trend for the same period (1987 to 31 December 2006) in the grid cell containing Byrd is even lower than that either grid cell closest to the Orsi borehole.
The 1957-2006 OLMC main reconstruction trend at Byrd is actually 50% greater than that per the Steig et al 2009 reconstruction, and HIGHER than Orsi’s borehole trend for the 50 years to 2007 of 0.23 C/decade. So, on that basis, adding the Orsi data would if anything reduce the OLMC West Antarctica reconstruction trend.
Since West Antarctica only makes up a little over 20% of the continent, the temperature trend for Antarctica as a whole is relatively little affected by the West Antarctica trend. It was the trend for the whole continent that the Guardian article, and the claim in Steig’s letter that OLMC had been proven wrong, concerned: he wrote “… his [i.e, my] letter also refers to an outdated study of his, which argued that previous estimates of overall Antarctic warming were too high. In fact, the work of Lewis and co-authors has been proven wrong.”
It is a pity that a highly experienced climate scientist like Professor Steig appears to have so little regard for the facts.
There is a huge difference between a borehole temperature reconstruction and an instrumental measurement air temperature record. It is indeed unfortunate that there are two separate weather stations at Byrd, with a long gap between them. There is no real justification for stitching their records together with no offset as Steig did in his 2011 blog post.
Nic Lewis said :
That does not sound quite right Nic.
According to the trend plot (“without the satellites the temperature stations alone say this”) in Jeff Condon’s post here, the trend at Byrd (80°S, 120°W) is something like 0.1 C/decade.
Similarly, Eric Steig presented that the O’Donnell et al reconstructs the 50 year trend at Byrd at +0.08 C/decade :
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/west-antarctica-still-warming-2/
and again here :
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/05/fresh-hockey-sticks-from-the-southern-hemisphere/
Question for you : Is Eric right ? And if not, what IS the 50 year trend a Byrd that O’Donnell reconstructed ?
Second, you wrote :
Well, let’s look at that assertion for a second :
If the real 50 year trend at Byrd is +0.38 C/decade (raw data) or +0.32 C/decade (Monaghan et al) or +0.25 C/decade (Steig et al) or closely matches WAIS borehole data +0.23 C/decade (Orsi et al), and NOT the +0.08 C/decade that O’Donnell et al obtained, then you have underestimated the trend at Byrd wrong by at least 0.15 C/decade.
Since Byrd is the ONLY record of any length anywhere in West Antarctica, if you get the Byrd trend wrong, you get the whole of West Antarctica wrong.
Thus, if you had West Antarctica wrong by 0.15 C/decade, then you get the entire continent trend wrong by about 0.15/5 = 0.03 C/decade. Which would change the O’Donnell et al 2010 continental trend from +0.06 +/- 0.08 C/decade to +0.09 +/-0.08 C/decade.
Which would mean that O’Donnell et al 2010 no longer can claim that Antarctica is not warming significantly.
Yes. a single borehole temperature reconstruction at a single point can indeed change everything.
So, yes, it’s kind of important that you explain what O’Donnell et al 2010 reconstructed at Byrd, exactly.
Rob Dekker,
You wrote “Yes. a single borehole temperature reconstruction at a single point can indeed change everything.”
My statement “The 1957-2006 OLMC main reconstruction trend at Byrd is actually 50% greater than that per the Steig et al 2009 reconstruction” was based on incorrect information. Apologies. However, you are iwrong in thinking that the trend for the whole of West Antarctica is very largely dependent on that at Byrd station (which itself may well be some way different from that at Orsi’s borehole location).
The Steig 2009 reconstruction 1957-2006 trend at Orsi’s borehole location is between 0.23 and 0.24 C/decade, close to Orsi’s own 50 year trend of 0.23 – not that their agreement proves anything at all. The OLMC reconstruction 1957-2006 trend at Orsi’s borehole location is 0.13 C/decade below the mean of Steig’s and Orsi’s trends. Increasing the OLMC trend of the (infilled) Byrd station record by 0.13 C/decade to reflect that difference would leave the overall OLMC 1957-2006 continental trend below 0.07 C/decade – still insignificant. Such an increase of 0.13 C/decade would take the OLMC infilled trend at Byrd above the corresponding Steig et al 2009 trend – although there is very little reason to think Steig’s mathematically-flawed estimate is better than the OLMC estimate.
Even leaving out the OLMC results, the huge differences between Orsi’s post 20 year to 2007 borehole reconstruction trend of 0.80 C/decade and the trend at Orsi’s borehole location both per the AVHRR data (circa 0.15) and per the Steig 2009 reconstruction from end 1987 to end 1986 (0.12 C/decade), point to the Orsi reconstruction being wildly inaccurate.
A couple of typos. In the first line of the final paragaph above, “Even leaving out the OLMC results, the huge differences between Orsi’s post”, the word “post” should not appear. Also, in paragraph two, “iwrong” should read “wrong”.
Nic Lewis said
Thank you for confirming that the trend at the Orsi et al WAIS divide location in O’Donnell et al is around +0.1 C/decade, and for estimating how much the effect Orsi et al borehole measured +0.23 C/decade trend could affect the end-results of O’Donnell et al. If the continental trend becomes +0.07 +/- 0.08 C/decade, the result is indeed still insignificant, although by an arguably uncomfortable small margin.
How did you conclude that ? As far as I can see, the infilled trend at Byrd in O’Donnell et al is +0.08 C/decade. If I add 0.13 to that, I get +0.21 C/decade, which is still below Steig’s trend at Byrd of +0.23 C/decade, and certainly below the +0.32 C/decade trend at Byrd from Monaghan et al.