Climate & Climate Change

Queensland’s Premier, Peter Beattie, has been telling the 2 million or so people who live in the south east of Queensland that “we have a water crisis and the worst drought on record”.

We are dependent on three dams to the north-west of the city of Brisbane and it has not rained in that catchment for some time. But is it the worst drought on record?

Most reporters have just been repeating the Premier’s claims that it is the worst drought on record; which in Australia only takes us back a hundred or so years.

But this morning there was a piece in local paper the Courier Mail explaining that: “a computer simulation showed if the Wivenhoe and Somerset dams had been built earlier this century they would have been empty during the federation drought and close to current levels in the 1940s. …hit low levels in the 1920s, late 1980s and late 1990s.”

William Kinnimonth in a piece for the IPA titled ‘Predictions of Drought Lack Credibility’ writing last June, in a whole of Australia context, identified the following drought years:

1885-1902 (the federation drought)
1914-15*
1937-45
1965-68
1982-83*
1991-95.

Kinnimonth links all of these droughts to either major El Nino events (1914-15 & 192-83) or to years when their was “El Nino-like sea surface temperature patterns across the equatorial Pacific Ocean” (those years not marked with an asterisk).

There is much speculation that the Premier will announce an early election for perhaps 9th September and make water a feature of his re-election campaign. This is perhaps a risky strategy as he is perhaps responsible for the ‘water crisis’ in so much as his government has invested very little in water infrastructure over the years. Alternativley he could hope it storms over summer? He doesn’t have to hold an election until February.

Is it likely to rain this summer potentially taking the pressure off south east Queensland water supplies?

My reading of the following advice from the Bureau of Meteorology is ‘perhaps’:

“The overall ENSO status remains neutral. Generally weak trends have been observed in the main Pacific climate indicators during the past few weeks, and the potential for an El Niño event to develop this year is still relatively low. … The main concern remains the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), which is still hovering around the −10 mark, indicating a general weakness in the Pacific Walker Circulation. In addition, the Trade Winds have been weaker than average across much of the Pacific during July, so this situation will be monitored closely for any sustained trends. However, with the exception of the far eastern Pacific, ocean temperatures are only marginally above average, both on and below the surface. Therefore, there is only a slight risk that the Pacific will warm to levels high enough for an El Niño event to develop.”

Given the importance of ocean temperatures as a driver of weather and climate it is interesting that climatologists don’t have a better understanding of how it all works. There is an interesting article titled ‘El Niño and Global Warming’ at www.realclimate.org exploring some of these issues.

But tell me, will it rain this summer in south east Queensland?

I was sent the following note from Walter Starck:

“The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) debate is not about a paradigm shift or even about a basic theory. No one is arguing that CO2 does not absorb IR or that burning fossil fuel does not add CO2 to the atmosphere. In essence the AGW debate is about whether increasing CO2 by a few hundredths of one percent of the atmosphere will have catastrophic consequences on global climate. AGW proponents claim scientific certainty that it will and cite as proof a 0.6 degree C increase in average global temperature over the past century, a putative increase in extreme weather events and predictions of ongoing future warming based on computer models of global climate. Skeptics find significant uncertainty in the amount, causes and consequences of any warming and in the accuracy of the models. They point to major doubts regarding the amount and cause of recent warming, past extremes that equal or exceed recent ones, benefits of CO2 enrichment plus numerous simplifications, guesses and omissions in the models as well as wide discrepancies between them.

No amount or strength of argument seems likely to resolve this debate before reality irrefutably intrudes. Barring a major global recession anthropogenic CO2 emissions will continue to increase for at least the next few decades and the truth or fantasy of AGW will become increasingly apparent.

On the skeptic side a good case has been put forward for an important role in solar variability on climate via an effect on cloud cover. This theory fits well with past climatic fluctuations and most importantly, it predicts future ones. Of these, the most significant is the Landscheidt Minimum around 2030 which should be comparable to the LIA.

Whether anthropogenic CO2 is forcing global climate toward catastrophic warming or solar cycles are the dominant control should become strongly indicative in the next decade and near conclusive over the following one. For skeptics to win this debate by superior evidence and argumentation would probably take longer than letting reality settle it. The more important role for skeptics is to provide an opposing balance against hysteria and to define what is to be learned from the whole affair. This is unlikely to come from true believers no matter what the actual outcome.

AGW proponents on the whole seem to be afflicted with a desire for certainty and intolerance of any suggestion of doubt while skeptics seem more concerned about dogmatism and false claims of certainty than they are of the possible reality of AGW. This difference in perspective reflects a fundamental divergence in the very essence of the scientific enterprise. Is it primarily a belief , a sphere of activity and a career or is it a particular philosophical approach to understanding based on empirical evidence, logical consistency and verifiability? Is the higher aim to provide authority for belief or to keep it open to question and better understanding? Is there a deficiency in scientific training that produces highly trained technicians but not the doctors of philosophy their degrees proclaim?

Also inherent in this divergence of perspective is the attitude to risk. Is it something to avoided at all costs (as enshrined in the precautionary principle) or something to be accepted or rejected on the basis of evaluation?

In the case of AGW it increasingly seems that such underlying issues may well be more important than the actual debate itself.

Walter Starck“

Dear Jennifer,

You might be interested in my recent Blog entry ‘Long term reduction in Australian deaths from, bushfires, cyclones and heatwaves’.

The next entry down ‘Is massive UHI warming in China distorting Jones et al gridded T data ?’ is reporting stunning differences between Jones and satellite gridded data. I thought the warmers were muttering some mantra that there is little difference between the datsets now.

I am hoping to be a bit more active on the Blog.

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) had a good week with media comment on their open letter to MP’s calling for a Royal Commission into IPCC science and how it is affecting NZ economy.

I have just added a general entry re the NZCSC open letter last week at the blog. Also one highlighting a simplistic and unworthy statement from NIWA in a May media release commenting on NZCSC. For me, a welter of activity and there is much much more in the pipeline.

Have a great weekend.

Warwick Hughes.

I’ve just been sent some publicity for Al Gore’s new movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. It’s an apocalyptic tale about climate change opening in Australia from 14th September with screening times to soon be available at the films new Australian website: www.aninconvenienttruthmovie.com.au .

I could organise a group booking for Brisbane-based readers of this blog at the Palace Centro in Fortitude Valley on the afternoon of Sunday 17th September? Send me an email if you are interested (jennifermarohasy@jennifermarohasy.com).

I was also sent this poster:

Does it mean that the Antarctic could become desert if we don’t change our ways, or that penguins could conceivably live in deserts?

The Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) is preparing a “comprehensive interactive on-line study guide” for the movie.

If you do a search at this blog site for ‘hockey stick’, Google will provide you with about 70 links and the first will link to a question I posted a year ago:

“What is the evidence for the medieval warm period? My understanding is that the Vikings were able to settle Greenland and grow grapes in Canada over several hundreds of years because the climate was significantly warmer. Yet this period is not evident in the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph.”

The Graph

[from BBC News]

The graph was the creation of Dr Michael Mann, et al, and was used by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to conclude in their influential 2001 assessment report that the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year of the last millenium.

Indeed the ‘hockey stick’ has emerged as something of an icon for believers in anthropogenic global warming (AGW), while global warming skeptics have dismissed it as shoddy science and another example of ‘believers’ using models to support a position at odd with the evidence in particular the existence of the medieval warm period.

Now a prominent statistician who is also a Univeristy Professor, Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and a member of the board of the American Statistical Association, has published a rather damning report on the hockey stick. As Paul Williams commented in the thread following my blog post last Friday, “… the hockey stick has just been hit for six”!

Following are some of the conclusions from Dr Edward Wegman as summarized by the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce:

1. Mann et al., misused certain statistical methods in their studies, which inappropriately produce hockey stick
shapes in the temperature history. Wegman’s analysis concludes that Mann’s work cannot support claim that
the1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium.

Report: “Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest
decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported by
the MBH98/99 analysis. As mentioned earlier in our background section, tree ring proxies are
typically calibrated to remove low frequency variations. The cycle of Medieval Warm Period and
Little Ice Age that was widely recognized in 1990 has disappeared from the MBH98/99 analyses,
thus making possible the hottest decade/hottest year claim. However, the methodology of
MBH98/99 suppresses this low frequency information. The paucity of data in the more remote past
makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable.”

2. A social network analysis revealed that the small community of paleoclimate researchers appear to review
each other’s work, and reuse many of the same data sets, which calls into question the independence of peerreview and temperature reconstructions.

Report: “It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers. It is not surprising that
the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications.”

3. Although the researchers rely heavily on statistical methods, they do not seem to be interacting with the
statistical community.

Report: “As statisticians, we were struck by the isolation of communities such as the paleoclimate
community that rely heavily on statistical methods, yet do not seem to be interacting with the
mainstream statistical community. The public policy implications of this debate are financially
staggering and yet apparently no independent statistical expertise was sought or used.”

4. Authors of policy-related science assessments should not assess their own work.

Report: “Especially when massive amounts of public monies and human lives are at stake,
academic work should have a more intense level of scrutiny and review. It is especially the case
that authors of policy-related documents like the IPCC report, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific
Basis, should not be the same people as those that constructed the academic papers.”

5. Policy-related climate science should have a more intense level of scrutiny and review involving statisticians.
Federal research should involve interdisciplinary teams to avoid narrowly focused discipline research.

Report: “With clinical trials for drugs and devices to be approved for human use by the FDA, review
and consultation with statisticians is expected. Indeed, it is standard practice to include statisticians
in the application-for-approval process. We judge this to be a good policy when public health and
also when substantial amounts of monies are involved, for example, when there are major policy
decisions to be made based on statistical assessments. In such cases, evaluation by statisticians
should be standard practice. This evaluation phase should be a mandatory part of all grant
applications and funded accordingly.”

6. Federal research should emphasize fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of climate change, and
should focus on interdisciplinary teams to avoid narrowly focused discipline research.

Report: “While the paleoclimate reconstruction has gathered much publicity because it reinforces a
policy agenda, it does not provide insight and understanding of the physical mechanisms of climate
change… What is needed is deeper understanding of the physical mechanisms of climate change.”

Read the full report here: http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf .

Hollywood blockbuster ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ was an apocalyptic tale about the Gulf Stream — the ocean current which circulates warm water from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere — being disrupted by global warming. In the following guest blog post, Rog summarises the latest research findings from Richard Seager on the Gulf Stream. This research suggests even if the Gulf Stream slows, New York won’t freeze over.

Oh well, I enjoyed the movie.

Rog writes:

There has been considerable speculation that changes to the body of water known as the “Gulf Stream” can alter climates on a local and global scale. Tim Flannery in his book ‘The Weather Makers’ speculates that the sudden drop of five degrees centigrade in Greenland ice cores was due to changes in the flow of the Gulf Stream.

Tim Flannery then goes on to state that changes to the Gulf Stream constitute a “tipping point” in global climate change.

The Pentagon shares Flannery’s views, in a study published in 2003 they warned that changes to the direction of the flow of the Gulf Stream could result in northern latitudes becoming suddenly colder and tropics much warmer leading to floods of desperate immigrants. The study notes that: “The dramatic slowing of the thermohaline circulation is anticipated by some ocean researchers, but the United States is not sufficiently prepared for its effects, timing, or intensity”.

However, in a recent article in the American Scientist, Richard Seager from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory disputes all these scenarios. He claims:

“..temperatures will not drop to ice-age levels, not even to the levels of the Little Ice Age, the relatively cold period that Europe suffered a few centuries ago. The North Atlantic will not freeze over, and English Channel ferries will not have to plow their way through sea ice. A slowdown in thermohaline circulation should bring on a cooling tendency of at most a few degrees across the North Atlantic—one that would most likely be overwhelmed by the warming caused by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases. This moderating influence is indeed what the climate models show for the 21st century and what has been stated in reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Instead of creating catastrophe in the North Atlantic region, a slowdown in thermohaline circulation would serve to mitigate the expected anthropogenic warming!”

Note that Richard Seager’s revelation was not founded on any new evidence.

“..All Battisti and I did was put these pieces of evidence together and add in a few more illustrative numerical experiments. Why hadn’t anyone done that before? Why had these collective studies not already led to the demise of claims in the media and scientific papers alike that the Gulf Stream keeps Europe’s climate just this side of glaciation? It seems this particular myth has grown to such a massive size that it exerts a great deal of pull on the minds of otherwise discerning people.

This is not just an academic issue. The play that the doomsday scenario has gotten in the media—even from seemingly reputable outlets such as the British Broadcasting Corporation—could be dismissed as attention-grabbing sensationalism. But at root, it is the ignorance of how regional climates are determined that allows this misinformation to gain such traction.”

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Comment/guest posts welcomed from others readers of this blog, email jennifermarohasy@jennifermarohasy.com .