Where Rivers Run North

Willis,
Interesting story. I wonder how many other cultural accidents have resulted in records like this.
There are arguments that it is not necessarily a direct indicator of temperature change, and doesn’t bear tremendous weight in that sense, but it’s another “indicator” – another bit of data that on its own may not be the definitive word, but still adds support to other evidence. There are lots of different types of indicators that the climate is changing. Some phenological records go back a long time:
“The Chinese are credited with keeping the first written phenological records, which date back to nearly 1000 BC. In Japan, accounts of when cherry tree blossoms were at their peak each year have been maintained for the last twelve centuries. Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus and British landowner Robert Marsham both kept precise and systematic phenological records in the 1700s.”
(https://phenology.cr.usgs.gov/overview.php)
I haven’t really explored this line of evidence thoroughly, but from what I have seen, it generally supports earlier springs, like so much other evidence.
Lately I’ve been hearing about things that skeptics sometimes say scientists have ignored, but were actually addressed long ago, such as the fact that CO2 change lags temps at the end of glaciations (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ3PzYU1N7A&list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfHsWPfAIyI7VAP&index=27). Apparently the fact that Antarctica is gaining mass in some areas was predicted (can’t remember where I saw that. There are plenty of assertions I have to track down; others can do the same). The slowing of the AMO was predicted based partly on the addition of freshwater in the Arctic. It baffles me how people can say the predictions made by mainstream climate scientists have not been correct. And you, Willis, what makes Gavin Schmitt a “serial failed doomcaster”? How is his tweet “spins”? And what on Earth is the problem with showing a trend? That is not “Unending straight-line warming “! What an odd, silly comment! You know, you so often make a lot of sense and sound very reasonable, then you come out-of-the-blue with these biased assertions that have nothing to do with any evidence discussed >>>as if you want to send a message.<<<< That is what I object to: so many of the WUWT post END on some (often irrelevant) note of ridicule, disdain or vilification, and that sets the tone for discussion. It's as if the posters don't trust readers to remember to scorn mainstream science. It doesn't matter if it's about Gavin Schmitt alone; he is in the collective "mind" just a representative for the rest of climate scientists, especially if, like me, people don't know why he is singled out. Do you not see what I mean, Willis? Can you, who is obviously intelligent, not see how unprofessional it is from a journalistic and scientific standpoint?
Can you not see how a blog like this has the potential to mask the truth and mislead its readers? If the ideas found in excerpts are so obvious, why are the interpretations so often different from mine? Why is relevant info often omitted? (This doesn't refer to your post – I suppose it's off-topic)
The idea that scientists have not thoroughly explored the relationships between the sun and climate after all these decades of climate science seems very odd indeed. Like so many other assumptions, it suggests that people have very little confidence in scientists to do their jobs (of course, it's true that many people foolishly believe scientists completely incompetent). Are they ignorant of the literature, or do they imagine some key element of the analyses is routinely wrong?
Your temp and ice-out vs year graph is interesting in the way it seems to show some of the general overlap in patterns. However, it's a little hard to know how much of this is an artifact of the method.
It's also hard to know what one is looking at from the graph alone. You only have temperature on the scale.. Is the ice out date here for the combined data set, or for one river?
So what we are seeing here are mean yearly temperature anomalies (base period?? This can't be from the original GISS anomaly data, so what is it?) in blue.and in red something akin to anomalies, but instead of their mean they are based on the mean of what? I'm sorry, I don't quite get what you've done. To get comparable amplitude of variability, you've changed the associated SD (of what?), and that recalculates the data?. Huh. I can't remember ever seeing something graphed like that, and I'm trying to get my head around it. The ice-out data has at more two data points associate with every year – where is the SD coming from? The variance in all the data, regardless of year?
At any rate, readers need to be careful in interpreting what they are seeing, no? The scaling of the ice-out data this way makes it look quite different, and incorporating the two tends to hide some features of each set alone – and possibly gives the illusion of correlation where there is none.
Alan is already interpreting the new graph, "Looking at only the scaled Ice Out temp conversion it certainly doesn’t look like any global warming to me." Has he completely ignored the real ice-out graphs? An excuse to dismiss warming will do; evidence believed is selected based on its ability to support one's ideas.
(By the way, I was reading the analysis of the climategate investigation the other day. It is completely unconvincing to me. The writers seem to think that the absence of a line of inquiry is automatically a fault, even if the investigation wasn't intended to address it. Just because someone (Steve McIntyre) wrote in with a complaint doesn't mean it falls under the purview of the investigation. The emails are (as usual) often interpreted for the reader in a negative light, regardless of context or alternative meanings. I find many of the analysis's "findings" scurrilous, meant simply to cast doubt on the value of the interrogation. It's a typical partisan think tank prop'ganda product. Yet you think it's a good analysis. Why can't you see it as I do? I can see it as you do, but that requires picking out the ideas that support your claims, and some of those ideas are not well-supported themselves. It's ironic that one of the first complaints is about the conflict of interest of one of the investigators, and ridiculous that it's based on the fact that he referred to "skeptics" as "deniers." Climate change "denier" has absolutely nothing to do with the Holocaust, it's about denial of the evidence – the "skeptics" create the straw man in order to avoid dealing with the reality of the assertion. There is not good term for either "side." "Skeptics" is absolutely ridiculous from the perspective of the scientific community. But I digress, once again. A perpetual problem with me.)
Anyway, interesting post. Thank you.