Rebuttal to Åström et al. Attributing mortality from extreme temperatures to climate change in Stockholm, Sweden., published in Nature Climate Change by Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger, Patrick J. Michaels, and Anthony Watts
Last fall, the press pounced on the results of a new study that found that global climate change was leading to an increasing frequency of heat waves and resulting in greater heat-related mortality. Finally a scientific study showing that global warming is killing us after all! See all you climate change optimists have been wrong all along, human-caused global warming is a threat to our health and welfare.
Not so fast.
Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the authors of that study—which examined heat-related mortality in Stockholm, Sweden—failed to include the impacts of adaptation in their analysis as well as the possibility that some of the temperature rise which has taken place in Stockholm is not from “global” climate change but rather local and regional processes not related to human greenhouse gas emissions.
What the researchers Daniel Oustin Åström and colleagues left out of their original analysis, we (Chip Knappenberger, Pat Michaels, and Anthony Watts) factored in. And when we did so, we arrived at the distinct possibility that global warming led to a reduction in the rate of heat-related mortality in Stockholm.
Our findings have just been published (paywalled) in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change as a Comment on the original Oustin Åström paper (which was published in the same journal).
We were immediately skeptical because the original Oustin Åström results run contrary to a solid body of scientific evidence (including our own) that shows that heat-related mortality and the population’s sensitivity to heat waves was been declining in major cities across America and Europe as people take adaptive measures to protect themselves from the rising heat.
Contrarily, Oudin Åström reported that as a result of an increase in the number of heat waves occurring in Stockholm, more people died from extreme heat during the latter portion of the 20th century than would have had the climate of Stockholm been similar to what it was in the early part of the 20th century—a time during which fewer heat waves were recorded. The implication was that global warming from increasing human greenhouse gas emissions was killing people from increased heat.
But the variability in the climate of Stockholm is a product of much more than human greenhouse gas emissions. Variations in the natural patterns of regional-scale atmospheric circulation, such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), as well as local impacts associated with urbanization and environmental changes in the direct vicinity of the thermometer are reflected in the city’s temperature history, and the original Oudin Åström et al. publication did not take this into account. This effect is potentially significant as Stockholm is one of Europe’s fastest growing cities.
But regardless of the cause, rising temperatures spur adaptation. Expanded use of air conditioning, biophysical changes, behavior modification, and community awareness programs are all examples of actions which take place to make us better protected from the dangers associated with heat waves. Additionally, better medical practices, building practices, etc. have further reduced heat-related stress and mortality over the years.
The net result is that as result of the combination of all the adaptive measures that have taken place over the course of the 20th century in Stockholm, on average people currently die in heat waves at a rate four times less than they did during the beginning of the 20th century. The effect of adaptation overwhelms the effect of an increase in the number of heat waves.
In fact, it is not a stretch to say that much of the adaptation has likely occurred because of an increased frequency of heat waves. As heat waves become more common, the better adapted to them the population becomes.
Our analysis highlights one of the often overlooked intricacies of the human response to climate change—the fact that the response to a changing climate can actually improve public health and welfare.
Which, by the way, is a completely different view than the one taken by the current Administration.
References:
Knappenberger, P., Michaels, P., and A. Watts, 2014. Adaptation to extreme heat in Stockholm County, Sweden. Nature Climate Change, 4, 302-303.
Oudin Åström, D., Forsberg, B., Ebi, K. L. & Rocklöv, J., 2013. Attributing mortality from extreme temperatures to climate change in Stockholm, Sweden. Nature Climate Change, 3, 1050–1054.
The paper:
Adaptation to extreme heat in Stockholm County, Sweden
Online at: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n5/full/nclimate2201.html
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Further detail by Anthony:
It should be noted that Nature Climate Change, which tends to be a fast track journal, took months to publish our correspondence, going through a longer than normal review process for such a short correspondence, and only did so along with a reply from Åström et al. Despite this uphill slog, we persevered.
Personally, I think the response from Åström et al. is ludicrous, especially this part:
“Our data indicate that there is no adaptation to heat extremes on a decadal basis or to the number of heat extremes occurring each year. “
Basically what they are saying is the people of Stockholm are too stupid to use an air conditioner or electric fan when it gets hot, and are incapable of any adaptation.
The other part of their response:
Our method of comparing the climate during two 30-year periods is valid for any two periods.
Well no, not really, and it is this flaw in their method that was a central point of our paper.
Variations in the natural patterns of regional-scale atmospheric circulation, such as the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) as well as local impacts associated with urbanization and environmental changes in the direct vicinity of the thermometer are reflected in the city of Stockholm temperature history, and the original Åström et al. publication did not take this into account. By not looking at these factors, and by just taking the Stockholm temperature data at face value, assuming all of the heat extremes in it were “climate change” induced instead of being partially influenced by other effects, including the AMO and the city itself, allowed Åström et al. to become victims of their own confirmation bias.
For example, look at the GISTEMP record from Stockholm (which ends before 2000, not my fault). Note the 1900-1929 period.
Åström et al. compared two periods of Stockholm temperature data: 1900–1929 and 1980–2009, and used them as the basis for their entire paper. Here is their method from the abstract posted on the NIH website:
Methods: We collected daily temperature data for the period 1900-2009 and daily mortality data for the period 1980–2009 in Stockholm, Sweden. The relationship between extreme temperatures and all-cause mortality was investigated through time series modelling, adjusting for time trends. Attribution of mortality to climate change was calculated using the relative risks and baseline mortality during 1980-2009 and the number of excess extreme temperature events occurring in the last 30 years as compared to our baseline period 1900-1929. Results: Mortality from heat extremes doubled due to warming associated with climate change. The number of deaths attributable to climate change over the last 30 years due to excess heat extremes in Stockholm was estimated to be 323 (95% CI: 184, 465) compared with a reduction of 82 (95% CI: 43, 122) lives saved due to fewer cold extremes.
Only one problem, a big one, note that right after 1929 there was a big shift in the AMO data – what happens to the AMO in 1930 is essentially a “sea change”.
After 1930, the AMO was positive (warm phase) for over 30 years, went negative (cold phase) again around 1963-64, and stayed negative until a big uptick around 1998.
The AMO was primarily in its cold phase during the 1900–1929 period, and primarily in its warm phase during the 1980–2009 period — a difference likely to be responsible for some portion of the increase in extreme-heat events identified by Åström et al. and inappropriately attributed to global climate change. See Sutton and Dong 2012 for an explanation as to why the AMO affects the temperature record of Europe.
Then there were the changes/growth in the city itself, some movements and encroachments on the Stockholm observatory station, plus the fact that the mortality numbers they cited didn’t make sense when compared to other studies of trends in heat-related mortality across the United States and Europe which have reported declines in both total mortality and the sensitivity of urban populations to extreme heat,despite an increasing frequency of extreme-heat events.
Despite the long review, to the credit of Nature Climate Change, they recognized that we had a valid argument that mostly nullified the Åström et al. paper. Otherwise we’d never have gotten this published. Unfortunately, we can’t counter all the media hype from the original publication, but I hope readers will cite our rebuttal when appropriate.
Knappenberger_Michaels_Watts_Correspondence_original (PDF)
– Anthony
Slightly warmer weather in Stockholm during a “heat wave”
The weather is nice for jogging.
Decide to finally get fit so go for a run or play a game of tennis.
For someone it’s a bit more than the heart can take.
People swimming. More than usual. Someone drowns.
More people travelling. Maybe a traffic accident or two more than in cooler weather.
More people out wining, dining, carousing politely or impolitely.
Perhaps a bit more to drink than usual..
Maybe a drunken confrontation that wouldn’t have happened if the protagonists had not left home.
That’s all increased the mortality rate.
Will Nature give permission to release reviews etc; seeing as that may be what is required?
So? He’s so anxious they be published, he should.
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Sorry to be pedantic…but it’s a ‘Paper’. A publication is a journal or magazine.
Still great news though. Science is winning.
Greg says: “me thinks lsvalgaard has prior knowledge of the review comments. ;)”
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John McClure says
With Respect Greg,
Lay off the Tolkien and find some factual basis…
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It seems odd that about half the comments here seem to be about publishing the review comments rather than the content of the “comment” article in Nature CS. That is mostly due to _heavy_ insistence by Leif.
I’m not sure why this is such a key issue that supplants discussion of the published “comment” itself.
Probably the main achievement here is getting something of a sceptical nature published in a Nature title. The publisher seems to be experimenting with things like double blind review process in an attempt to address criticisms of the review process. Both would seem to be positive moves by the publisher and should be applauded.
I don’t see that it helps those attempts, if the first thing done when such an article gets published is the authors flout the rules or otherwise try to get around them as Lief is demanding they do.
He is also suggesting bad faith in the Chip’s responses. So what is driving this insistence?
It was a simple speculation, but this suggested to me that lsvalgaard may have himself been part of this double-blind process or may have professional contact with someone else at Stanford that was, and was trying to “out” something contained in that correspondence.
Suggesting that the authors are being intimidated by fear of legal proceedings seem ludicrous. More likely they don’t want to dump on the publisher the first time they manage to get a correction to a ridiculous biases piece of AGW non-sense into print.
lsvalgaard got out of bed on the wrong side today.
I read the entire article and methods from a medical standpoint. Causes of mortality in the population have profoundly changed in the last 2′ years. In this article there is no correction for changing causes of mortality (i.e. reduction of cardiovascular mortality and infectious diseases, increase of colon cancer, diabetes etc), aging and working conditions. There is no a-priori statistical power calculation.
No information on actual causes of mortality is provided.
In order to analyze the mortality rates related to temperature, the pathophysiological correlation between temperature and each specific cause of death has to be empirically verified and quantified to be able to establish the attributable risk for each event.
I would than had expected to see a univariate analysis first and a multivariate analysis as second step to identify all independent predictors and hazard ratio(s) (including temperature and heat waves and different temperature-related cause)
BTW The same authors also published a similar paper for Entire Europe (free access here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3563142/) . These guys would have never been able to publish such a study on a medical journal they need a good doctor to advise them.
Greg says:
May 1, 2014 at 12:28 am
It was a simple speculation, but this suggested to me that lsvalgaard may have himself been part of this double-blind process or may have professional contact with someone else at Stanford that was, and was trying to “out” something contained in that correspondence.
Not so, sorry.
Suggesting that the authors are being intimidated by fear of legal proceedings
precisely so.
From that linked “paper”.
” For example, the heatwave that occurred in Europe 2003 could be expected to return every 46 000 years, based on the temperature distribution for the years 1864–2000.15 However, such extreme hot conditions may become much more common at the end of this century due to anthropogenic climate change.16 The uncertainty in this estimated return time is quite high, with a lower bound of the 90% CI of 9000 years.”
Jeezus .H. , what are these guys smoking?
We will very likely be in another frigging glaciation by then, not worrying about a 2003 “heat wave”.
Chip Knappenberger says:
April 30, 2014 at 8:53 pm
What was not an option was to go to Nature, agree to their rules, and than break that agreement for the sake of the way we think they ought to be running things.
1st: you did not have an ‘agreement’. You did not ‘sign’ anything, although you explicitly claimed you did (lying to us is bad !!!).
2nd: you would not be arguing with them about now they ‘run things’, but simply serve science rather than serve Nature (which is a business that does not give a rat’s ass about the science).
3rd: you could be more forthcoming, e.g. ask Nature if you may discuss your answers to the reviewers [without revealing who they were – you probably don’t know yourself].
4th: trying to frame the issue as one of moral high road [you] versus a low-life lack thereof [me] is inappropriate and offensive.
5th: you sacrifice science on the altar of expediency even after having paid lip-service to openness
6th: In view of your attitude I admit defeat, and you are right I don’t operate like you: I would never stoop that low.
Worlds population increasing a 100,000 a day and the top, hot , three countries to be hit by extreme weather over the last 20-30 years, Honduras, Burma and Haiti have all nearly doubled their populations in this time frame.
Makes you wonder how the British did back in the 18th, 19th century moving from a fairly cold climate to India and in the clothes of the day, Disease was a problem but the hot, humid climate? There again it’s not like they had to move around much with all that cheap labour at their disposal.
A. Scott says:
April 30, 2014 at 2:44 pm
Anthony’s orig response to the Stockholm paper:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/24/claim-climate-change-caused-more-deaths-in-stockholm/
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Thanks A. Scott.
excerpt:
This is one of those publications where I look at what was done in the paper and just shake my head in disbelief. For starters, according to the data listed in the SI, the supposed extra deaths due to climate change manifesting itself as increased summer temperatures came from model output; they didn’t actually have health services data/coroner data that showed causes of death. They simply assume the model output is valid.
Isn’t the real question, why was Åström’s paper allowed to be published? Is the review process this bad at Nature Climate Change?
Chip Knappenberger says:
April 30, 2014 at 8:53 pm
What was not an option was to go to Nature, agree to their rules, and than break that agreement for the sake of the way we think they ought to be running things.
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Sounds reasonable, even if it’s just implicit agreement about sticking to the rules of the journal.
I don’t see anyone getting sued over this but crapping on them or being a PITA may make it hard next time something is submitted.
lsvalgaard says:
May 1, 2014 at 3:16 am
1st: you did not have an ‘agreement’. You did not ‘sign’ anything, although you explicitly claimed you did (lying to us is bad !!!).
…..
6th: In view of your attitude I admit defeat, and you are right I don’t operate like you: I would never stoop that low.
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Why all the vitriol and strong language? Clearly you have some other issue here , either the contents the review correspondence that you say you don’t have any knowledge of, or some other issue with Chip Knappenberger . It does not look like lsvalgaard is being too “transparent” about his motivation here.
lsvalgaard says: 4th: trying to frame the issue as one of moral high road [you] versus a low-life lack thereof [me] is inappropriate and offensive.
Projection.
Hear, hear, Greg. So wussup leif & chip? You think we can’t handle the truth? Well, you’re right.
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Leif might help untie the hand strapped behind the back rather than slap the face in front.
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Greg says:
May 1, 2014 at 6:26 am
Why all the vitriol and strong language?
I don’t like to be lied for starters. I see no vitriol beyond what the situation calls for. The language is strong because I see this issue as important.
Clearly you have some other issue here
You are being very presumptuous. My goal is simple: it would serve the science to know what objections or issues the reviewers had and how the authors responded to those. In my humble opinion that would be as illuminating as the paper itself. Here are two examples that illustrate my point: My review of a paper submitted to Nature http://www.leif.org/research/Nature-Review.pdf and my response to reviewers of a paper I had submitted to Nature http://www.leif.org/research/No%20Doubling%20of%20Open%20Flux.pdf
That paper was rejected although later developments have shown that I was correct after all.
If the authors are intimidated by the excessive demands for secrecy they could always paraphrase the review using their own words. Chip is himself not being consistent: he proposes to show us the original submission which is also confidential according to Nature’s rules [“All material submitted to Nature is confidential”]. I don’t believe there is any foul play behind his reluctance, but weaker souls might wonder.
Leif,
I think the part of the argument you’re missing is that if the authors release information, it might dissuade Nature from publishing similar papers in the future. It’s a matter of a long-term view vs. an immediate view.
We can disagree whether that’s the case or not, but that doesn’t appear to be what you’re arguing.
Leif,
Read the “pre-publicity” part of the Nature publication policies. Here is an excerpt:
“1. You are welcome to post pre-submission versions or the original submitted version of the manuscript on a personal blog, a collaborative wiki or a preprint server at any time (but not subsequent pre-accept versions that evolve due to the editorial process).”
Also, I already did (up thread) paraphrase the major comments from the reviewers.
I hardly see that abiding by an agreement that I willing entered into is being intimidated.
-Chip
Chip Knappenberger says:
May 1, 2014 at 8:09 am
Also, I already did (up thread) paraphrase the major comments from the reviewers.
Where? I don’t see any. and where are your responses to the reviewers?
I hardly see that abiding by an agreement that I willing entered into is being intimidated.
summarizing the objections and your responses would not violate the ‘agreement’ that you didn’t sign. Your reluctance is not becoming for a scientist.
Leif,
I wrote previously:
“In general terms, the biggest concern was over our contention that climate change itself could spur an adaptive response. We won out.”
How did we support our argument? With a few literature citations and an appeal to common sense.
Another reviewer concern was that Astrom et al did not claim (in their paper) anthropogenic global warming was behind the temperature rise. We responded that we never claimed they did.
The same reviewer was concerned that an urban heat island was already accounted for in the data used in the Astrom et al. study. We argued that at least some portion of it of it may have been missed.
The second reviewer’s comments were in the realm of asking us to re-write to improve clarity in some passages.
Overall, as you can tell by comparing our submitted version with the published version, our changes were minor and did not substantially alter the intent of our Correspondence.
-Chip
Nice precedent setting rebuttal guys!
This blog could do without the bickering over the insignificant.
I did garner some interesting insight from this comment :
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Steven Mosher says:
April 30, 2014 at 10:26 am
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Sooooo,,,,,
Apparently,,,,, using a fan causes paralysis and you die from dehydration.
Did I read that right or did I miss the homogenization or extrapolation used on the data to arrive at that conclusion?
Obviously you cannot engineer common sense.
Chip Knappenberger says:
May 1, 2014 at 8:09 am
Also, I already did (up thread) paraphrase the major comments from the reviewers.
Chip Knappenberger says:
May 1, 2014 at 8:30 am
I wrote previously:
“In general terms, the biggest concern was over our contention that climate change itself could spur an adaptive response. We won out.”
You claimed to have paraphrased the major comment [plural], but you only did one and your response, “we won out”, is hardly illuminating. So again, you are a bit economical with the truth.
This whole thing is like squeezing blood from a stone. You say ‘we argued…” but you do not tell us what the argument was, etc. The purpose of releasing the review and [at least] the response would be to tell the reader if the objections were relevant and how well they were met. In other words: was the review addressing the issues raised by the paper, and did the responses have merit. In this way the reader who most likely is not an expert on the topic may feel comfortable about the alleged findings. You see, it is not about beating the editor and the reviewers into the ground in order to get published at any cost, but about helping the readers to assess the paper, and you have failed in this regard. Please try to rectify this.
Leif,
The things you are arguing for are available from open review journals. Nature Climate Change isn’t one of them.
If you think I made a bad choice by submitting to them in the first place, then so be it. Maybe you would be right.
My justification is that is where the original paper was published and I was approached to submit a response. Otherwise, I probably would have just written blog post about it (one of a large series of blog posts I have done on trends in heat-related mortality). Maybe Anthony would have cross-posted my post and then you (and everyone else) would have seen the critiques and response (if they were to come).
Certainly, an open review process is a transparent and illuminating one, and almost certainly a better one. However, that is but one factor which comes in to play when deciding which journals to submit to (as you certainly know).
You can continue to berate me about my choices. But they have already been made. I am sorry that they didn’t meet your expectations.
-Chip
Leif and Chip
While I very much think open review would be a good thing we agreed to play in their sandbox by their rules and to violate them now would do nothing other than reflect badly on us.
While the review process was overly long it was not overly contentious and there is no “smoking gun” in the review to expose.
lChip Knappenberger says:
May 1, 2014 at 8:09 am
Also, I already did (up thread) paraphrase the major comments from the reviewers.
Chip Knappenberger says:
May 1, 2014 at 8:30 am
I wrote previously:
“In general terms, the biggest concern was over our contention that climate change itself could spur an adaptive response. We won out.”
You claimed to have paraphrased the major comments [plural], but you only did one and your response, “we won out”, is hardly illuminating. So again, you are a bit economical with the truth.
This whole thing is like squeezing blood from a stone. You say ‘we argued…” but you do not tell us what the argument was, etc. The purpose of releasing the review and [at least] the response would be to tell the reader if the objections were relevant and how well they were met. In other words: was the review addressing the issues raised by the paper, and did the responses have merit. In this way the reader who most likely is not an expert on the topic may feel comfortable about the alleged findings. You see, it is not about beating the editor and the reviewers into the ground in order to get published at any cost, but about helping the readers to assess the paper, and you have failed in this regard. Please try to rectify this.