Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Some Reading

Eli got Klotzbach Revisited by Jos Hagelaars on Bart's old stomping grounds looking at what the march of time has brought wrt predictions

The expected increase in the differences between the surface temperatures and the satellite temperatures over land has not occurred. To the contrary, 13% more data show that the trend difference over land has decreased by 18% for NCDC/RSS and by 33% for NCDC/UAH.
The trend difference has thus decreased rather than increased, and whereas Klotzbach-2009 and its fans champion the argument that this difference is due to a ‘bias’ in the surface temperature record (some 1700 words were spent on this argument in K-2009), a ‘bias’ in the satellite record may be equally, or perhaps even more plausible.
John Christy has replied to this, saying among other things that
It appears Hagelaars’ key point is that when the data from Klotzbach et al. are extended beyond 2008 to include data through 2012, the discrepancies, i.e. the observed difference between surface and tropospheric trends relative to what models project, are reduced somewhat.” 
And Hagelaars raises an interesting point in his reply to the zombies
My key point is that if K-2009 were correct, the absolute temperature difference between surface and troposphere would be expected to increase over time (due to the fact that the presumed bias in the surface temperature data has not magically disappeared, see e.g. this paper by Watts et al). In contrast, this temperature difference has decreased about 33% for the ‘NCDC minus UAH’ data (which showed the largest discrepancy). This absolute difference was used by Marcel Crok in his book “De Staat van het Klimaat” to suggest that the surface temperatures is biased.
Why this large difference with only 13% (4 years) more data? If anything, it casts doubt on the robustness of the K-2009 results.
The other point I wanted to make is that the apparent discrepancies could also, perhaps even more likely, be due to biases present in the satellite data, as indicated by Santer et al 2005. Also new biases are constantly being discovered, see the Po-Chedley & Fu paper.
Which brings Eli to the question of whether Christy and Spencer have ever released their software.  There are evils that lurk in loops and squirrels unseen by bunnykind.  If not, they better get ahead of the truck, e.g. the new regulations on releasing scientific results.

Ed Darrel is on an obit kick (there are some more immediately below that one) and Evan Jones is trying to defend his and Willard Tony's cherry picking (they appear to have submitted something somewhere).

Science of Doom is playing in Wonderland with radiative forcing.  Seriously great stuff.

Anyone else.  Consider this an open thread




18 comments:

Sou said...

Still working through your links. Starting from the Jones effort.

I haven't read all the posts in the Evan Jones / Ed Darrel discussion.

A question though, before I struggle too much further. Am I correct in concluding that Jones has discarded data that is on the minus side, included data on the plus side and then is arguing: "see, the pluses don't cancel out the minuses".

Or have I got it all wrong?

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

"Which brings Eli to the question of whether Christy and Spencer have ever released their software. There are evils that lurk in loops and squirrels unseen by bunnykind. If not, they better get ahead of the truck, e.g. the new regulations on releasing scientific results. "

Chain rattlings in the background attributable to Ghost of TTAPS Bluebook Past.

Magnus said...

Well reading is going down any way http://www.getreading.co.uk/sport/football/readingfc/s/2126021_neil_webb_reading_fc_must_prepare_for_relegation_scrap

EliRabett said...

Well yeah, Sou, seems that way.

Willard Tony has forever been picking cherries.

Sou said...

I've sometimes wondered what would happen with the UAH record if Spencer and Christie moved elsewhere and some bright spark took it on.

(I dunno, maybe they'd switch to preaching (are they religious?) or lackey in Inhofe's office or maybe even retirement?)

Hank Roberts said...

> TTAPS Bluebook

Google finds only this relevant hit in its first page of results: http://www.scribd.com/doc/21549460/Earley-Nuclear-Winter1

"... Earley is not able to explain how on earth the KGB managed to influence Crutzen and Birks. The idea that the scientists wouldn't be convinced by a Soviet published
study, but they would believe circulating fruadulent [sic] scientific data is ridiculous. Of course, there is a first-hand account by one of the authors of the Ambio paper. Paul Crutzen ...."

The scribd.com text is incomplete. What's there suggests buying a used car from Mr. Earley could be unwise.

Anonymous said...

"Which brings Eli to the question of whether Christy and Spencer have ever released their software."

http://magicjava.blogspot.com/2010/02/dr-john-christy-on-uah-source-code.html

"We are in a program with NOAA to transfer the code to a certified system that will be mounted on a government site and where almost anyone should be able to run it. We actually tried this several years ago, but our code was so complicated that the transfer was eventually given up after six months."

and that was 3 years ago.

"Chain rattlings in the background attributable to Ghost of TTAPS Bluebook Past."

yeah right, it's all because the Ames stratospheric model hadn't been published online back in the 1980's...

seriously Russell, your obsession with the nuclear winter research is getting out of control.

Anonymous said...

No point paying attention to Earley, it's fringe Reading anyway.

http://goo.gl/maps/BNFg9

EliRabett said...

Everybunny needs a hobby.

EliRabett said...

Why does Eli get the feeling that the S&C code is spag? Go2 Go2 Go2

John Mashey said...

Go2 considered harmful.

dhogaza said...

"Well yeah, Sou, seems that way. "

I haven't looked at the current effort but in its first incarnation they definitely were throwing out airports that met their "well-sited" criteria because they, in esssence, showed "too much" warming.

So their hypothesis that well-sited stations showed less warming than poorly-site stations hinged upon them tossing out data from a class of well-sited stations they don't like.

Anonymous said...

Is collecting and displaying one's knowledge of arcane acronyms (arcanyms?) a hobby now?

~@:>

badger badger badger said...

Too complicated for ftp? What, do they run it all on Windows so you have to strip out the ^Ms? Does it use IBM extended ASCII?

EliRabett said...

Well, looks like the source was put on a NOAA site in late 2012. Eli has posted the information http://rabett.blogspot.com/2013/03/an-apology-from-eli.html

Lionel A said...

arcane acronyms?

Go2 by any chance?

If so that is easy, GOSUB http://rabett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/some-reading_12.html?showComment=1363186823103#c3311909385053342308

Anonymous said...

I was actually referring to "TTAPS" which probably only a few people in the world are familiar with (without looking it up) and probably even fewer care to know about.


~@:>

Lionel A said...

'I was actually referring to "TTAPS" which probably only a few people in the world are familiar with...'

Only those who have only spent a dog-watch on this topic. Besides many recent texts, e.g. Schneider, have discussed this.