'Bout What Ethon Expected

Just when Ethon was getting set to go into business, his Christman liver shipment arrived from Roger Jr.  Roger is not pleased about the USGCRP draft report and, well, he is doing his usual Steve McIntyre imitation.  It is really hard with those guys when they get going to wipe the spit off the inside of the LCD monitor.

Anyhow, this is but a very short take on the thing and there will be updates, Eli is even willing to outsource the work to the Bunnies, but, reminiscent of old times, Roger Writes

To underscore its conclusion, the draft report includes the figure at the top of this post (from Hirsch and Ryberg 2011), which shows flood trends in different regions of the US. In a remarkable contrast to the draft USGCRP report, here is what Hirsch and Ryberg (2011) actually says:

The coterminous US is divided into four large regions and stationary bootstrapping is used to evaluate if the patterns of these statistical associations are significantly different from what would be expected under the null hypothesis that flood magnitudes are independent of GM [global mean] CO2. In none of the four regions defined in this study is there strong statistical evidence for flood magnitudes increasing with increasing GMCO2.

Now some, not Eli to be sure, might assume that there was a computer malfunction, because what Hirsch and Ryberg 2011 added to that was (emphasis by Rabett)

The coterminous US is divided into four large regions and stationary bootstrapping is used to evaluate if the patterns of these statistical associations are significantly different from what would be expected under the null hypothesis that flood magnitudes are independent of GMCO2. In none of the four regions defined in this study is there strong statistical evidence for flood magnitudes increasing with increasing GMCO2. One region, the southwest, showed a statistically significant negative relationship between GMCO2 and flood magnitudes. The statistical methods applied compensate both for the inter-site correlation of flood magnitudes and the shorter-term (up to a few decades) serial correlation of floods.

Of course, a drying of the US southwest is one of the base predictions from the IPCC AR5.

 Eli intends to dig into this, but even by eye, part of this result appears to be the arbitrary division of the US into four parts.  The west coast has been a bit wet (El Ninos?) but the area west of the dividing line and east of the Sierra is very dry, and  there are strong indicators of a wetter trend north of the Ohio River Valley and in the northeast.

UPDATE:  Tom Fiddaman points to his comments on Hirsch and Ryberg.  They are not in praise, but it is very interesting, as Tom did, to look at the pattern of how precipitation will change predicted in the AR4 WG I Fig. 11.12 in comparison

FURTHER UPDATE:  Also see Romm on Hirsch and Ryberg

Still a great example of Pielkeball.