A rash of stunning turnarounds have vindicated years of effort by climate sceptics. The day after ClimateGate broke I made three predictions: . Disband the entire Federal Department of Climate Change along with all the individual State Departments of Climate Change. . Vote down the Emissions Trading Scheme Legislation. . Cancel Copenhagen. Australia's Department of Climate Change has been 'watered down' to become the Department of Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water. The ETS was voted Read more [...] 7 com

From Nature (see http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo761.html): "The precipitation anomaly of the past few decades in Law Dome is the largest in 750 years, and lies outside the range of variability for the record as a whole, suggesting that the drought in Western Australia may be similarly unusual." Climate science has a colorful history of hyperbole: hurricanes, droughts, floods, fires, famines. Old habits die hard and so do true believers. I want to turn attention to the Read more [...] none

A recent Nature paper we have been reviewing, claims recent snowfall at Law Dome, Antarctica and the drought in Western Australia "lies outside the range of variability for the record as a whole". Being about precipitation (often more important to us than temperature), and claims of evidence of AGW causing drought, its interesting. I finally succeeded in replicating the results but only after resorting to viewing the code, due to omissions in the description of methods. Below I argue (at the end) Read more [...] 11 com

I try not to pen editorials. OK here goes. I respect the attention given to this blog, as there are plenty of other great blogs on climate change, politics, finance, etc to read. I try to stay an 'on message' advocate for numeracy. Everyone has something to offer from their experiences though. Right at this moment, there is something to say that is important about numeracy, but takes a bit to explain. I would encourage y'all to read the discussion on New paper on mathematical analysis of GHG Read more [...] 60 com

While the US has had record snowfalls, Australia has had its own excesses of precipitation. Below is a 30 day loop of precipitation. The sequence starts with cyclone Olga crossing the coast in the far north east, moving into the Gulf, and tracking south with widespread rain down through the central east and south east. The rain quickly moves to the east, with heavy rain and storms on the east coast, especially Sydney, but then appears to 'bounce west' and collide with a very large trough to bring Read more [...] 9 com

Just posted on arXiv: The virial theorem and planetary atmospheres by Viktor T. Toth. Abstract We derive a version of the virial theorem that is applicable to diatomic planetary atmospheres that are in approximate thermal equilibrium at moderate temperatures and pressures and are sufficiently thin such that the gravitational acceleration can be considered constant. We contrast a pedagogically inclined theoretical presentation with the actual measured properties of air. Read more [...] 120 com

Please discuss the new paper by Michael Beenstock and Yaniv Reingewertz here. Way back in early 2006 I posted on an exchange with R. Kaufmann, whose cointegration modelling is referenced in the paper, entitled Peer censorship and fraud. He was complaining at RealClimate about the supression of these lines of inquiry by the general circulation modellers. The post gives a number of examples that were topical at the time. ClimateGate bears it out. Steve McIntyre wrote a long post on the affair here. [R]ealclimate’s Read more [...] 73 com

The claim that "the precipitation anomaly of the past few decades in Law Dome is the largest in 750 years, and lies outside the range of variability for the record as a whole", is a 'Hockeystick-like' claim. Such claims have a considerable literature, and the analysis I have been doing is reminiscent of Rybski et.al. on the temperature record. Koutsoyiannis has a career of work grappling with non-normal statistics in hydrological data, using models with long-term-persistence, and the difficulty Read more [...] 40 com

Here is the distribution of annual snowfall in Law Dome Antarctica over the last 750 years (blue), compared to a normal (dashed red) and a lognormal (solid red) distribution. Remember that in the finest Popperian tradition we are trying to disprove that the snowfall in the last few decades at Law Dome has been unusual. To do this, I have used a robust approach of aggregation (splitting the series into equal sized section), estimating the parameters of the lognormal distribution, then plotting Read more [...] 11 com

Yes I watch "House". I wanted to return to the issue of whether the snowfall in Antarctica is normally distributed, as it has bearing on the claim in van Ommen and Morgan from the abstract: The precipitation anomaly of the past few decades in Law Dome is the largest in 750 years, and lies outside the range of variability for the record as a whole, suggesting that the drought in Western Australia may be similarly unusual. The relevant passage in the supplementary information where normality is Read more [...] 3 com

Here is the second major claim contained in van Ommen and Morgan from the abstract: Here we report a significant inverse correlation between the records of precipitation at Law Dome, East Antarctica and southwest Western Australia over the instrumental period, including the most recent decades. The actual figures quoted for correlation are as follows. The results show significant negative correlation between seasonal June–August average values of the SWWA regional series and LawDome. Read more [...] none

An issue in question here is whether the recent snowfall at Law Dome is unusually high relative to the 750 year long record (and therefore, so the argument goes, probably due to AGW). Below is the snowfall at Law Dome from the ice core. Above is the actual snowfall, and below is the accumulation of the series minus the mean (using the R function cumsum) indicating where snowfall is above or below average. This simple approach is not used in the paper. While the accumulation of snow at present Read more [...] 18 com

After yesterdays post on the gibberish proof of global warming due to increased Antarctic Circulation, Andrew drew attention to Jones, J. M. and M. Widmann, 2004, Early peak in Antarctic oscillation index claiming that the Antarctic Oscillation has changed in the last thirty to forty years, but is only where it was in the late fifties to early sixties. Tas Van Ommen claims to have found that snowfall has increased in East Antarctica. Looking into his previous publications, one of the first I pulled Read more [...] 14 com

A transcript of an interview with Tas van Ommen on the link between Antarctic excess and West Australian deficits of precipitation displays questionable proof of anthropogenic global warming. A natural circulation pattern surrounding Antarctica has three lobes because of the three continents and three ocean basins in the Southern Hemisphere. Tas claims in the past 30 to 40 years the strength of that three-lobe pattern has increased, bringing moisture and warmth into Antarctica and dry air back Read more [...] 14 com

The latest submission to arXiv:physics.ao-ph is entitled Interglacials, Milankovitch Cycles, and Carbon Dioxide by Gerald E. Marsh. Here is a review of the evidence regarding the timing of Termination II, the penultimate interglacial transition 140k years ago, and factors that may have caused it: CO2, Milankovitch induced insolation changes, or changes in solar magnetic flux, altering the Earth's albedo through cosmic ray flux. To appreciate the importance of this period, and a clear logical analysis Read more [...] 14 com

Until recently, even hardened climate skeptics when asked about the science would say: "Well we think it is warming, but how much is caused by humans is uncertain". Now a rash of revelations are coming out to challenge even this bedrock claim, e.g. It seems that when we leave out the great number of weather stations that were introduced in the last 50 years or so, that the tendency is absolutely not a rise in temperature, see Global Warming Vs Clojure!. Andrew Bolt recently reported on base Read more [...] 11 com

A few impressions from Monckton's talk at the Brisbane Irish Club, providing some novel points not seen elsewhere. Some interesting impressions did come out of it. I found Monckton (and Plimer) a little disappointing in quality of presentation and slides. A fair bit of time was put into boosting the audience, but his essential points on low climate sensitivity were rushed over. Plimer gave a hand-waving review of geological history, making the point that CO2 has never been responsible for the Read more [...] 3 com