I’ve moved to WordPress: http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Regarding Missing Comments At The Minnesota Public Radio Climate Change Blog

I’ve moved to WordPress.  This post can now be found at Regarding Missing Comments At The Minnesota Public Radio Climate Change Blog
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UPDATE 2 (11-5-09): It’s Thursday and six days have gone by since MPR emptied its spam filter and released my original comment. Paul Huttner responded to it.

I then posted three replies to Paul. The first advised him that I had revised the title of my post, eliminating the word censor, and had updated the version of the post here at my website. My second comment advised him that the first of my most recent comments was stuck in the spam filter again, just like the original one. And the third was a detailed response to Paul’s reply to my original comment. Only the second of my three comments made it past the spam filter.

That leaves the other two still in there, floating in the limbo of the MPR spam filter.

If Paul Huttner has read the thread since October 30, 2009 7:25 PM, he is aware that there are comments awaiting moderation, but maybe he hasn't returned to read the comments.

UPDATE (10-30-09): It appears we resolved the problem of missing comments at the Minnesota Public Radio Updraft © blog. The comments were held in a spam filter that the moderator Paul Huttner appears not to have known existed and that appears not to be checked on a regular basis, since my initial comment remained in the filter for a day and a half.

In response to Meteorologist Paul Huttner’s request on his “Could 2010 be the hottest year ever?” thread…
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/updraft/archive/2009/10/could_2010_be_the_hottest_year.shtml
…in which he asked me to resubmit my comment, I did as asked, but documented the text that appeared when a comment is being held for approval by a moderator; that is, “Thank you for commenting…Your comment has been received and held for approval by the blog owner”

I suggested he check his spam filter in a subsequent comment.

He replied, “I'n [sic] not an IT guy, so I don't know why you would get that message. I will be happy to forward it to those who would know.”

Then later Ken Paulman, Managing Editor for Online News at MPR, added, “The missing comments were indeed being caught up in a spam filter. I've released the unpublished comments and they should be visible on the site now.
“The comments that didn't post had a large number of hyperlinks - suspect that's why the filter didn't like them.
“Paul does not screen comments beforehand.”

The comments do now appear on the webpage, and in response to Paul Huttner’s request,”Would you please remove or change your incorrect blog post headline below?” I have changed the post title.

The new title of the post is, "Regarding Missing Comments At The Minnesota Public Radio Climate Change Blog."

The following is the rest of this post, which remains unchanged.
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This morning while checking blogs with the phrase “sea surface temperature” I happened on the Minnesota Public Radio Updraft © climate change blog. Meteorologist Paul Huttner authored a post there titled “Could 2010 be the hottest year ever?” Link:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/updraft/archive/2009/10/could_2010_be_the_hottest_year.shtml

The post begins with, “The numbers are in, and it looks like the "global cooling" theory just melted away.” It has the requisite link to the typical news release (Seth Borenstein’s (AP) article “Statistics experts reject global cooling claims”) and a two-year-old GISS Annual Global Temperature Anomaly Graph, even though a graph of current data would have better helped his cause. But what struck me and caused me to comment there was, first, Huttner’s use of the Climate Change Attribution graph…

http://i39.tinypic.com/2s0o2uo.jpg
…which he wrongly attributes to Kerry Emanuel, and, second, his projection that 2010 could be the warmest on record while hinting that ENSO would ultimately be responsible for it.

I felt obligated to advise him of his error in attribution of the graph and of the fact that the Climate Change Attribution graph uses outdated TSI data. I also reinforced the ENSO-global climate link over the past decade by quoting from Knight et al (2009), but noting that Knight et al make an error in their assumption that the relationship between ENSO and global temperature is linear. Here’s what I wrote:
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Paul Huttner: A few things. You attribute the Climate Change Attribution graph to Kerry Emanuel, but it’s actually from Global Warming Art:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution_png

The graph is obsolete. It relies on an outdated (1993) Hoyt and Schatten TSI reconstruction that was manufactured, in part, to explain the rise in global temperature in the first half of the 20th Century. The current understanding of TSI variability shows little change in solar minimum:
http://i40.tinypic.com/zjb977.jpg
I discussed this in detail here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/agw-proponents-are-two-faced-when-it.html

As you imply, global temperature variations are dictated by ENSO. This is confirmed by Knight et al (2009) "Do global temperature trends over the last decade falsify climate predictions?":
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/global_temperatures_09.pdf

They write, "El Nino–Southern Oscillation is a strong driver of interannual global mean temperature variations. ENSO and non-ENSO contributions can be separated by the method of Thompson et al. (2008) (Fig. 2.8a). The trend in the ENSO-related component for 1999–2008 is +0.08 +/- 0.07 deg C decade–1, fully accounting for the overall observed trend. The trend after removing ENSO (the "ENSO-adjusted" trend) is 0.00 +/- 0.05 deg C decade–1, implying much greater disagreement with anticipated global temperature rise."

So there hasn't been the anticipated rise in global temperature because, after you remove the effects of ENSO, the trend is zero. Therefore, if this year is a record year, it should be attributable to ENSO, not AGW.

Also note that Knight et al (2009) assume the relationship between ENSO and global temperature is linear. It is not.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/relationship-between-enso-and-global.html

Have a nice day.
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And what did Meteorologist Paul Huttner do?

He rejected my comment.
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And as noted in the update above, the comment was being held in a spam filter that appears not to be checked on a regular basis.

6 comments:

John said...

Hi Bob -

When Knight et al say that the models take into account internal variability and thus these type of decades can be anticipated and are included in the models, do you have any idea what type of internal variability they are talking about?

He separates out ENSO ... what else could he be referring to?

I've heard it many times that the models anticipate stable or even decreasing decades, but I've never understood how they do it, absent a negative external forcing like aerosols or whatever.

Am I misconstruing something? Can you offer any insights?

John said...

One other question -

I notice from the Svaalgard reconstruction that we are at a minimum now. This doesn't change any arguments about ENSO influences, etc, but if we were at a maximum instead of a minimum, would we see current temperatures about .1c higher (which would push SST to "record" highs), perhaps lending strength to the AGW view that this decade is merely a "respite" from warming? That the solar minimum is masking increased forcing from co2?

A .1c varation in a decade is half of what they'd expect from co2 forcing, right?

But wouldn't they take these solar variations into account for the models for the 2000-2010 period? I don't remember anyone saying "oh, the slight variation in solar cycle is what is creating the flat temperatures."

Thanks again, as always. I appreciate being able to use you as a sounding board - your knowledge obviously vastly outweighs mine.

John said...

Or I am off because, if it's a steady anomaly, the variation down from past would have cancelled out the variation up now, making overall anomalies unimpacted?

Bob Tisdale said...

John: I'll try to answer your recent questions, those that I can, this afternoon or tomorrow. I'm busy off line today.

Regards

John said...

Thanks Bob.

If at any point my numerous questions become bothersome, please let me know! I will gladly stop them.

Bob Tisdale said...

John: Sorry for the delay. You asked, “When Knight et al say that the models take into account internal variability and thus these type of decades can be anticipated and are included in the models, do you have any idea what type of internal variability they are talking about?”

ENSO and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.

The AMO has a 50- to 80-year cycle so they can anticipate it within a few decades. ENSO also has an underlying multidecadal cycle, but I don’t recall it being discussed in papers about how GCMs address ENSO. Most of those papers assume that NINO3.4 SST anomalies and the frequency of El Nino events will increase this century, even though the NINO3.4 SST anomaly trend line is flat in the 20th Century (and now declining).

In your next comment you asked, “I notice from the Svaalgard reconstruction that we are at a minimum now. This doesn't change any arguments about ENSO influences, etc, but if we were at a maximum instead of a minimum, would we see current temperatures about .1c higher (which would push SST to ‘record’ highs), perhaps lending strength to the AGW view that this decade is merely a ‘respite’ from warming? That the solar minimum is masking increased forcing from co2?”

First, the record highs existed in only one SST dataset, the NCDC’s ERSST.v3b. The NCDC’s OI.v2 and the Hadley Centre’s HADSST2 and HADISST did not reach records this year in terms of SST or SST anomalies. Second, the estimates of the impact of the solar cycle vary, as does the time lags associated with it. Estimates of the impact of the “average” solar cycle as it goes from minimum to maximum on global temperature vary from ~0.07 to 0.15 deg C. And the estimates of the time lags depend on what medium is being measured. The lag in the change in temperature over land to a change in the solar cycle is usually measured in terms of a few months, but over the ocean, due to thermal inertia, the lag varies per study from a few years to a few decades. If the solar cycle stays an extended time at minimum, global temperatures would “remain” at a lower temperature (after all of the lags); temperatures would not continue to drop, and drop, and drop more the longer the sun stays at minimum.

You asked, “A .1c varation in a decade is half of what they'd expect from co2 forcing, right? A .1c varation in a decade is half of what they'd expect from co2 forcing, right?”

Right, assuming the projected rise over a century is 2 deg C and that climate models have a basis in reality, which they do not from all that I’ve seen, but the IPCC as you know provides wide variations in those projections.

You asked, “But wouldn't they take these solar variations into account for the models for the 2000-2010 period?”

But a solar cycle varies in length from 9 to 13 years, so over a decade it would pretty much be the mean; that is, half the time we’re on the up slope and on the other half we’re on the down slope.

You asked, “Or I am off because, if it's a steady anomaly, the variation down from past would have cancelled out the variation up now, making overall anomalies unimpacted?”

I’m not sure in what context you’re using “steady anomaly”, but over a decade, the upward part of the cycle cancels out the downward part.

Regards.

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