By Renee Hannon
The more the acronyms, the more respected the peer-reviewed article? I typically enjoy reading about climate science, oceanography and extreme weather. However, some of the technical articles are becoming overloaded with acronyms. One of the recent articles in Nature by Bereiter, and colleagues is a good example.
Here’s a few of their acronym loaded sentences:
“MOT is a S-GAST biased parameter….so the synchronicity of MOT and AAT/CO2 is consistent with GAST lagging AAT/CO2.”
“The close relation between our MOT record and AAT/AMOC changes as well as the strong warming during the YD1.”
“It is not straightforward to constrain the LGM-Holocene ASST or GAST change from the MOT change we derive here.”
“The AMOC switched to its strong state, which in turn starts cooling AABW, making it again harder for the AMOC to sustain its strength as AABW becomes denser again.”
I counted over 20 acronyms in their 5-page article, most of which were defined and a few that were not. Here’s the list in no particular order:
MOT = mean ocean temperature
LGM = last glacial maximum
PSS = practical salinity scale
AABW = Antarctic bottom water
NADW = North Atlantic deep water
B/A = Bolling -Allerod
YD1 = Younger Dryas
WD2014 = not defined
ASST = average sea surface temperature
GAST = global average surface temperature
PMIP = Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project
WAIS = not defined [West Antarctic Ice Sheet]
AMOC = Atlantic Meridional circulation
OCE326-GGC5 = ocean sediment core
IntCal13 = not defined, some sort of calibration [Calibration method for radiocarbon age dating, it replaces IntCal09]
HS1 = Heinrich Stadial 1
AAT = Antarctic temperature
N-GAST = Northern Hemisphere temperature
S-GAST = Southern Hemisphere temperature
NH = Northern Hemisphere
SH = Southern Hemisphere
Once I was able to sift through all the acronyms, the article did reveal interesting observations about ocean temperatures. Bereiter and colleges reconstructed mean ocean temperature using noble gases in ice cores for the Holocene with unprecedented accuracy. They found that mean ocean temperature is closely correlated with Antarctic ocean temperatures or in their acronyms, MOT is biased towards polar regions WRT to ASST. And the ocean warming during the early Younger Dryas period exceeded present day ocean temperatures.
Nice job BSBKS!
[Ed. Note: Renee is not the only one! I don’t care how carefully you did the scientific work, clarity of writing is important. Excessive use of acronyms and abbreviations is clearly poor writing and should be criticized. In my opinion, peer reviewers should flag it and insist that they be clarified or spelled out. AM]
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Love the Bill Wattersen quote! Applies so well to several of the ‘well practiced’ resident trolls found on this blog!
I am a founding member of PAAA or People Against Acronyms And Abbreviations.
PA^3?
When in doubt, give the acronym to a 12 year-old boy to see if he can find anything dirty about it.
This might have worked for the Canadian Reform Alliance Party…
BOHICA
And who is “AM” — when he wakes up? (The person who wrote the “Ed. Note”)
As an essayist, I’ll point out that the use of abbreviations is a great space, time, and effort saver. How many times can one type out “Global Average Surface Temperature” or, worse, “Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation”.
For authors, I recommend the standard, first use, rule — the first instance in a paper or essay use a formula like:
Some of these abbreviations and acronyms are “industry standard” and need not be spelled out when writing a technical article in a technical journal — in CliSci, AMOC and PDO may be well enough know not to be spelled out at all if one is writing about ocean circulations.
Kip,
Using a few “industry standard” acronyms in a technical article is perfectly fine. However, using six acronyms in one sentence is a bit annoying. The article referenced over 20 different acronyms and I counted approximately 240 times these acronyms were used.
Renee ==> Quite Agree.
The devil is always in the details….one can hardly avoid acronyms for the various ocean circulations, for instance, the acronyms are the normal notation, and the spelled out versions are the exception. Much worse is medicine, especially things like blood serum levels — in which everything is an acronym — many doctors only know the acronym, and not what it stands for. (My father, for instance, and my current GP — well, they know what significance it has, but often can’t tell you what the letters stand for).
If GAST = Global Average Surface Temperature then
N-GAST = Northern Hemisphere temperature and
S-GAST = Southern Hemisphere temperature
are using both Global and Hemisphere in the same acronym, therefore their definitions make no sense (much like many articles on CAGW).
Good point! Maybe they should use NAST and SAST?
Reminds me of the medical field. Acronyms are widely used, but frowned upon. One acronym can have multiple meanings, some specific to one institution. The confusion caused can potentially kill patients.
An acquaintance, who is one of the top senior students at medical school, had a paper rejected multiple times, because the academic supervisor couldn’t work out what the acronyms meant.
I took “Verbal Learning” as part of the curriculum in the Psychology Dept in grad school even tho I was in the psychophysics end of things .
Want to see acronym overload look at articles is a field which studies the memory of nonsense syllables .
Thus, today Antarctic ocean temperatures are a close proxy for global ocean heat content?
Is this a reasonable conclusion?
And what are Antarctic ocean temperatures doing?
Good question on Antarctic Ocean temperatures, however I do know the Gulf ocean temperatures are quite chilly.
This topic is not complete until we explore the world’s greatest acronym artists… the Russians.
There is GULAG. And then there is, according to Guinness, the longest:
NIIOMTPLABOPARMBETZHELBETRABSBOMONIMONKONOTDTEKHSTROMONT
Someday we can expect an entire paper written only with the first letter of each word, or acronym.
How very acrimonious ….
Since no one else has pointed out the abbreviation scene from “Good Morning Vietnam” I will.
“Excuse me, sir. Seeing as how the V.P. is such a V.I.P., shouldn’t we keep the P.C. on the Q.T.? ‘Cause if it leaks to the V.C. he could end up M.I.A., and then we’d all be put out in K.P.”
I would like to end on a positive note that this study on noble gas ratios in ice cores has provided a new and more accurate gage of ocean temperatures. And that ocean temperatures have only risen about 0.1 deg C over the past 50 years. You can read an acronym-free summary at this link. https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/new-study-identifies-thermometer-past-global-ocean.
I’m so glad Anthony posted this, and am heartened by the responses. I started my career working on ICBMs back in 1980, and have worked in rocketry and space launch ever since. So you can imagine that my field is awash in acronyms and initialisms. I took a short course in orbital mechanics and trajectory optimization once. The instructor was many years my senior. At one point, he strayed off topic to note that “if we didn’t use acronyms, we’d be on Mars by now.” He deplored them. He said that when he was touring post-WW-II Britain, he encountered many, many signs which read “UXB.” Baffled, he finally found out that this stood for “Unexploded Bomb.” Upon telling this to one of his classes, he was delighted when a female student noted that they had saved only one letter. “An ‘unexploded bomb’ is just a bomb, ” she said. “There’s no such thing as an ‘exploded bomb.’ There’s only shrapnel and gases.”
I’ve never, ever seen a field so in love with acronyms and initialisms as climate “science.” It is so excessive that I find articles posted here baffling, and difficult to follow. No one else, including my industry (which largely pioneered the phenomenon), uses so many. And I do think it is an attempt to both obfuscate the message, and to attempt to borrow some of the “prestige” from NASA.
There are times when acronym users best fit the types of backgrounds described here:
Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science
by Professor Paul R. Gross (Author), Professor Norman Levitt (Author)
and here:
Intellectual Impostures
by Jean Bricmont (Author), Alan Sokal (Author) (of the classic and much cherished ‘Sokal Hoax’)
Fine books, both, and a good way to better understand the inanity all around.
I am not suggesting the Bereiter Nature article attempts to obfuscate its message, but certainly others have prided themselves in so doing.