Niche Modeling

Just as a quick look at the data provided from CSIRO for the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report, I made density plots (frequency histograms) for the rainfall data over two periods, 1900-2010 and 2010-2040 for the South-west of Western Australia, the area with the highest drought predictions. The plot below is the result, with the [...]

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This started out as a request to CSIRO for data used in coming to conclusions in the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report, which spawned a series of posts and some furore when the data were not forthcoming immediately. Kevin Hennessy of CSIRO informs me that the data are now available on the BoM website. [...]

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David Evans , aka ‘rocket scientist‘, shared his progression from a believer in anthropogenic global warming (AGW) to skeptic in response to new evidence (longer article here). Bayesian updating is a way of modeling rational changes of mind. I want see if DE is a rational, thinking person. Dr. Jim Peacock, Chief [...]

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A superb opinion piece published recently in The Australian graphs one scientists conversion from AGW believer to skeptic after failing to find evidence. David Evans is the self-confessed rocket scientist who wrote the custom carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s carbon credit in the land use change and forestry sector. In disagreeing with [...]

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Attempts to get some summary data from the Drought Exceptional Circumstances report out of Australia’s scientific organization CSIRO, in order to check the statistical significance of the results, have been described as a saga. The way this has been picked up on various blogs and comments shows the depth of concern people have about [...]

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The Intellectual Property card was played today so I cannot verify the statistical significance (or otherwise) of the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report. But I found out enough about the statistical tests (performed after publication of the report due to my promptings) to determine that autocorrelation in the temperature series was probably not taken into [...]

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Today I received a reply from CSIRO regarding the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report. I was very pleased that Mr Hennessy expresses an interest in providing the data needed to check the results, and will refrain from further comment until I get the data and analyze it.

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It was described by the ABC and Agriculture Minister Tony Burke as like “a disaster novel”, but a simple test shows the drought predictions are not statistically significant, apart for the SW of Western Australia. The conclusions should read:

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The Drought Exceptional Circumstances report has been released (and reviewed here). The ABC described it thusly: “A new report is predicting a dramatic loss of soil moisture,
increased evaporation and reduced ground water levels across much of
Australia’s farming regions, as temperatures begin to rise
exponentially.” The Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO report was described by [...]

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The Draft Garnaut Report is to be commended for commissioning a study Global temperature trends - Breusch and Vahid (BV) by two prominent Australian National University (ANU) econometricians to examine global temperature series. The approach they take to modeling temperature has a long history. See for example at RealClimate,
Rybski, and Koutsoyiannis. Their [...]

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The Garnaut report on regulating carbon emission is due to be made public today. According to The Australian, Professor Garnaut’s 600-page report will provide detailed analysis of how climate change will affect the Australian economy and what should be done to combat the issue. The article mentions emissions trading scheme, black-outs, bankruptcies [...]

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