Betting

Bet on March UAH!

55 Comments

UAH has been jumping around so much, betting late is probably just fine. Besides, the online AMSU tool doesn’t give much information worth using. So this month, you can bet after most of the month is in!


[sockulator(../musings/wp-content/plugins/BettingScripts/UAHBets5.php?Metric=UAH TTL?Units=C?cutOffMonth=3?cutOffDay=23?cutOffYear=2013?DateMetric=March, 2013?)sockulator]
Bets close at midnight, March 22, 2013.

55 thoughts on “Bet on March UAH!”

  1. Yawn.
    How about betting on when/whether Marcott et al will be withdrawn:
    (a) Today (Monday)
    (b) Tuesday
    (c) Later this week
    (d) Next week
    (e) Some time in April
    (f) Never

  3. Paul: good idea, but too hopeful. The bet should be on how long before the first 3 papers confirming Marcott are published. My guess is 9-months

  4. Maybe when one of its conclusions has been found false? The paper states explicitly that the recent blade isn’t robust – neither is anything over less than 300 years.
    .
    Note that the real paper is on Google Scholar, so you don’t need to take my word (or SteveMc’s words, and non-words) for it.

  5. The paper states that the difference between the standard and infilled reconstruction is not robust. If it meant to say the sharp bit of the scythe was wrong, it was certainly not explicit about it. Shame also that the non-robust reconstruction is the one that features most prominently and has garnered all the attention – maybe they should have put the infilled reconstruction in pride of place?

    This month’s temperature – same as last month’s. Whatever that was.

  6. If it’s not robust, then cut it off. Otherwise, you are selling selling selling the non-robust sizzle. If it blades, it leads.

  7. Jit: Figure 3c shows the infilled reconstruction, IIUC. The paper says:

    at longer pe-riods, more variability is preserved, with essen-
    tially no variability preserved at periods shorter
    than 300 years, ~50% preserved at 1000-year pe-
    riods, and nearly all of the variability preserved
    for periods longer than 2000 years

    .
    Howard: If you read the paper, they’re not selling the blade. They’re selling the handle. For the blade, we have instruments and projections.
    .
    The point of the paper is that projected 2100 temperatures were never *stably* reached over the last 11Ky. Including the Holocene optimum. The moneyshot is Figure 3.

  8. “They’re selling the handle.”

    “Selling” being the moneyshot of this quote. 😉

    or “They’re selling”

    Why yes, they are.

    Andrew

  9. toto:

    Howard: If you read the paper, they’re not selling the blade. They’re selling the handle. For the blade, we have instruments and projections.

    They have a problem on the handle too, as well as other problems with claims made within the paper.

    • One is, we don’t know how the blade is oriented relative to the blade (offset bias) nor how the scale on the handle relates to the scale on the blade (scale bias).

    • A second is it has a big notch during the LIA not seen in (recent) reconstructions (it’s unlikely it’s not statistically indistinguishable with respect to that feature).

    • A third is it’s too low of frequency to say anything about something that occurred from 1970-now.

    • A fourth is, attribution studies suggest that the warming from circa 1910-1950 was primarily natural in origin; however, the slope for this period *is* statistically indistinguishable from 1970-now. That means, counter to claims of Marcott, that not only did his paper not show that there is something unique about the current, presumably anthropogenically-driven, warming (because his paper lacks the resolution to say anything regarding 40-year times scales), even the existing temperature record suggests there’s nothing unique in about the current warming trend (other than, putatively, origin of course).

    I’m pretty sure, but haven’t tested, if you went back and added physically plausible Monte Carlo’d noise to Marcott’s reconstruction, you’d find extended periods where it was warmer that it is now.

  10. One is, we don’t know how the blade is oriented relative to the blade (offset bias) nor how the scale on the handle relates to the scale on the blade (scale bias).

    I believe that, according to them, their proxies don’t require scale calibration (aka are already physically calibrated). They argue that the good alignment with millenium-scale reconstructions (Mann, Moberg et al.) confirms this. I may have gotten things wrong though.

    A second is it has a big notch during the LIA not seen in (recent) reconstructions (it’s unlikely it’s not statistically indistinguishable with respect to that feature).

    I’m not sure I understand this? If anything, Figure 1E seems to show a stronger LIA in the millenium-scale reconstruction?

    A third is it’s too low of frequency to say anything about something that occurred from 1970-now.

    Indeed. Hence he unreliability of the blade.

  11. The interesting part is that this new paper is based on Marcott’s own PHD thesis where the same data does not show such an uptick in temps.

    Looks like they did not use the published dates for ocean cores, instead substituting their own dates. Kind of changes things a bit, don’t you think.

    “As noted in my previous post, Marcott, Shakun, Clark and Mix disappeared two alkenone cores from the 1940 population, both of which were highly negative. In addition, they made some surprising additions to the 1940 population, including three cores whose coretops were dated by competent specialists 500-1000 years earlier.”

    http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/16/the-marcott-shakun-dating-service/

  12. toto, I was confused on that point. (I thought I posted a follow up comment that said this, but it seems to have been eaten… sorry.)

  13. Okay, I’m in. Roy made a mistake on February. He needs to go back and recalculate. It was much warmer.

  14. toto is right, their marine proxies cannot be calibrated because of their +/-centennial scale resolution and the temperature signal is based on strictly on chemistry and “calibration” curves and “error” curves. This is why their “error” bands are nice and uniform… it’s the ad hoc error term of the calibration methods.

    However, toto is wrong that we have the blade via instruments and projections which is like sticking a feather in your cap and calling it macaroni. There needs to be a justified physical and data link between the proxies and the instrument record. It would end up being a sort of house of cards, but that has not been done here. Marcott makes no such link which was essentially Mike’s Nature trick. That couldn’t be repeated, so instead, they keep the non-robust blade front and center to make a big-boy splash in Science.

    Go over to the empty blog to get some juicy confirmation bias…
    Hans von Storch interviews Julia Hargreaves in which she says: “In order to publish in high impact journals the numbers must keep getting bigger and the outcomes more scary.”
    She is then trashed on her own blog

    http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2013/03/anthropological-data-point.html

  15. Carrick,
    “I’m pretty sure, but haven’t tested, if you went back and added physically plausible Monte Carlo’d noise to Marcott’s reconstruction, you’d find extended periods where it was warmer that it is now.”

    They actually did that in Sec 11 of the SM. Fig S21 shows some time domain results.

  16. Howard,
    That thread is very interesting. Jules’ comment about leaving the blog posts to the more ‘flame retardant’ James in the future is telling. The rapid turning upon and condemnation of anyone who says ‘the wrong thing’, no matter their bonafides, is shocking; the politico-enforcers are ever vigilant and ever intolerant.
    .
    Intimidation is a big part of the strange culture of climate science, and (sadly) that intimidation seems to be working. It is a field with too much political influence, and that leads to a lack of real scientific progress.

  17. SteveF–Look at the people saying that: Steve Bloom, Thingsbreak and so on. Hardly people who advocate balance. There are plenty of people out there (on both sides) who are of the opinion that one must always filter out anything — even if obviously true– that falls on the “wrong” side of their extreme of the argument and promote stuff on the “right” side.

  18. Nick’s comment above (#111484) made me look again at Marcott et al.’s figure 3. It appears that the alkenone proxies display a much higher variation over the Holocene than others. [Purple distribution in figure 3.] As these proxies seem to have a reasonable latitudinal variation, this seems surprising. Marcott et al. doesn’t comment on that. Anyone have a good explanation?

  19. Lucia,
    Agreed. The only difference is that intimidation of working scientists would seem more destructive of progress.

  20. I don’t think SteveBloom and such like will intimidate Jules from speaking her mind to journalist or scientists who call her. I think she’s reserved and quite not-confrontational and prefers to avoid back-and-forth in comments while James somewhat enjoys it. (I’m not saying James is confrontational– but only that I suspect he rather enjoys a certain amount of back and forth.)

  21. Hopefully Jules is aware that thingsbreak, albatrose and Bloom are twisted f**ks who are using the meme of global climate change as a venue for verbally attacking and abusing other people, which for them seems to be a sport.

  23. Niels A Nielsen (Comment #111502)
    March 19th, 2013 at 2:39 pm

    Steve Bloom spreading lies about Lucia:
    http://forums.accuweather.com/…..ntry172945
    ————–
    Thats a little dated, isn’t it? 07/2008? I mean, not throwing stones; I can hold a grudge a good long while too, but still…

  24. Niels,

    What does “Removed_Member_Steve Bloom_*” mean? Has he been banned from being able to comment in their forum? Or does it mean they removed some appendage of Bloom’s?

  25. Course, it might be fun to revisit that conversation. Steve Bloom said:

    The problem is, she isn’t. Basically what Lucia is saying is that if the recent short-term flat trend in global air temperature continues for long enough then the models will be disproven. Sure they will. The problem is that climate has a fair amount of natural variability, and that with such a small overall trend (averaging at most a fiftieth of a degree centigrade per year) there will be times when the short-term trend diverges considerably from the long-term trend. Similarly, if the long-term trend had been calculated in that manner at the end of 1998, we would have concluded that the planet was about to fry. Note also that there was a seven-year period of no apparent warming around 1980. A prediction done based on the short-term trend at the end of that period would have failed to predict the warming that has occurred since then (and would have also “disproven” the models had they existed then).

    That said, if another five to ten years goes by and we still don’t see signiificant additional warming, then it will be time to wonder about the models.
    ————
    Well, 5 years have gone by, just about. Is it OK to start wondering about the models now? 🙂

  26. Mark Bofill–
    I think the ensemble of models in the AR 4 are biased high.

    Moreover, there is a recent peer review paper that discusses the models in the AR5 being biased high. The provide their corrected projection for the future based on the observed discrepancy in data up through now. I need to go find that. . . We don’t yet know whether the projections in the AR5 will be based on the multi-model mean (as in the AR4) or a correction (as in this new paper.)

  27. Lucia,
    “We don’t yet know whether the projections in the AR5 will be based on the multi-model mean (as in the AR4) or a correction (as in this new paper.)”
    .
    I’m betting there will be enough AR5 ‘corrections’ to keep the model mean projections from becoming the butt of jokes on late night TV. Moving the goal posts is a time honored way to avoid having to admit error, at least among the politically adept and intellectually corrupt. Count on something along the lines of:

    Those old AR4 projections? Heck, everyone understands they were too high because of vast but unmeasured heat going into the deep ocean, an unusual pattern of repeated la Nina’s, lower solar intensity, and huge Chinese SO2 emissions. F&R already proved most of that. But warming is going to return with a terrible vengeance, maybe not right now, but within the next decade…. we just have NO CHOICE but to to stop burning fossil fuels immediately, no matter the cost!

    Little boys crying wolf end up inviting the wolf to dinner.

  29. Lucia,
    “I think the ensemble of models in the AR 4 are biased high.”
    And would be slightly higher if the MMMs had been calcuated V 1980-1999, rather than 1980-2000!
    Official A1B MMM for 2013 = 0.505c
    Actual A1B MMM for 2013 using 1980-1999 = 0.540c

  30. Lucia,
    “I think the ensemble of models in the AR 4 are biased high.”

    Personally, I do too. Based on my own made up method, I’d keep the models with a TCR of 1.6C +/-0.3C. That would leave the following:

    CCSM3
    CGCM3.1(T47)
    CNRM-CM3
    CSIRO-MK3.0
    ECHO-G
    GFDL-CM2.0
    GFDL-CM2.1
    GISS-EH
    GISS-ER
    INM-CM3.0
    PCM
    UKMO-HadGEM1

    And from this list I’d get rid of GFDL-CM2.0 due to it being superseded by CM2.1, GISS-ER because I think it’s wonky and by association GISS-EH. So in total, I’d keep 9 sresa1b projections.

    So now I have made a prediction of which models will provide the best predictions. Time to download the data.

    I don’t think ECS is a particularly helpful metric in predicting which models will perform best over the next few decades.

  31. Lucia,

    That’s interesting. I’ve got to go looking for that paper. Certainly it’s great to use observed discrepancies to correct, but do you know if the paper make any effort to perform a postmortem on any of the models and figure out why the discrepancy was there in the first place, or is this just a matter of fiddling with the knobs so to speak? In other words, are they REALLY correcting the problem by trying to figure out what the root cause was in the first place, or are they merely ‘steering’ to keep the car on the road for another few dozen yards?

  32. postmortem on any of the models and figure out why the discrepancy was there in the first place

    Nothing I would call a post-mortem. It doesn’t change the models. It just adjust predictions based on how much excess warming they show in already observed temperatures.

    Presumably, other people running the models would try to figure out fundamental issues. Those just comparing to observations can only do so much.

  33. It’s funny how the “hind-cast” projections were more accurate than the “forecasts”.
    As Niels Bohr supposedly said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”.

  35. Ray: As Niels Bohr supposedly said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”.
    O
    Niels Bohr undoubtedly repeated that common Danish proverb. It was perhaps coined byRobert Storm Petersen – certainly not Bohr.

  36. Fair enough, I see I didn’t really think that through properly.

    The question was fair enough. But if everyone had to solve every possible problem existing in climate (or any) science and present the solution inside the page limits of 1 single journal article, nothing would ever be published.

  37. Given that Roy has stated that Aqua Channel 05 is suffering from drift errors leading to over estimation, the UAH global average temp page doesn’t provide useful data for absolute temperature @ 600mb, however, is one justified in suggesting that trends remain significant?

    If so, the decline in UAH GAT in March is unprecedented in amount and rate, exceeding any previous March decline recorded and at twice the rate of decline (only 2004 is remotely comparable).

    The unprecedented status of the decline is reflected in the Channel 6 (400mb) & Channel 7 (250mb) records.

    Are we witnessing a super tropospheric cooling event? 🙂

  40. Sorry for the double post – I thought that the first one hadn’t worked.
    Drat!
    Now my link works with the “html” replaced by “pl”!
    I wish I had tried that before.

  41. Is it just coincidence that CH5 temperatures fell dramatically at the same time as the website using the html suffix apparently became unavailable.
    My estimate for March is now far too high!

  42. Of course, you’re right Ray, the ‘unprecedented’ decline is just Aqua, not UAH, mea culpa, t’was just intended as a bit of fun!

    Used to be that a weighted combination of Aqua Channel 5, 6 & 7 change gave a good approximation to UAH change but no longer

    I seriously doubt that UAH will decline by 0.3-0.5degC in March but what a hoot should ChuckL’s bet prove accurate

  43. Gras Albert,
    “Used to be that a weighted combination of Aqua Channel 5, 6 & 7 change gave a good approximation to UAH change but no longer”
    I think it still does, only you have to be aware of the latest differential. Having said that, I never found that adding ch6 and 7 improved matters.
    Also, it isn’t much use if there is a last minute change in temp. which you can’t see!
    By the way, are you located in Poland?
    It seems that the link is working with the PL suffix but not HTML.

  44. Something of an explanation on Roy Spencer’s site.
    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/03/new-satellite-temperature-trends-page/
    Nice of him to tell us – now.
    My analysis of this month’s betting:

    NO. OF BETS 48
    MAX 0.480
    MIN -0.165
    MEAN 0.196
    MEDIAN 0.185
    STD DEV 0.123
    MEAN 1-24 0.450
    MEAN 25-48 0.480
    MEAN PLUS 1 SD 0.319
    MEAN MINUS 1 SD 0.073
    WITHIN +/- 1 SD (%) 72.92
    ABOVE MEAN (%) 47.92
    BELOW MEAN (%) 52.08
    The average seems to have increased during the course of the betting but that is partially due the early bet of -0.165c.
    Personally I think I am out of the betting already!

  45. Another day, another decline

    Make that >0.5degC in 8 days! as at March 23

    Wonder if there’s something up with the satellite/process?

    Ray, ‘.pl’ is part of the page name, nothing to do with the domain name which in this case ends at .gov

  48. Yup, I emailed Roy Spencer to ask for clarification

    A 0.8degC drop in 9 days is ridiculous, there has not been a remotely similar instance in the entire satellite record, let alone for March which is typically a warming month.

    Can anybody suggest a mechanism which would allow the Troposphere to lose 4% of heat content in little more than a week?, other than an artifact of hardware or data processing failure.

    If the 0.2degC warm bias suggested by Dr Spencer is removed the March 24th GAT is not only a record for March, it’s lower than any for February since the GUI data began in 2003

  49. Gras Albert,
    I tend to agree with you.
    Since the higher levels of the atmosphere don’t seem to have increased much, does this mean that the “missing heat” has gone into the near surface layer, which of course we can no longer see on the website, in which case we are in for a big increase in UAH!
    Or it’s gone into space and has been lost forever of course!

  50. Roy has responded

    We won’t know till we compare the recent drop to the other 2 satellites. It looks suspicious to me. The noise in that channel has been rising for a couple years now, and it could be it’s close to failure.

  52. “A 0.8degC drop in 9 days is ridiculous”.

    You obviously haven’t seen “The Day After Tomorrow” or you wouldn’t be so sure!

  53. And Roy confirms that Channel 5 is ‘out to lunch’

    Should the NOAA data he provided to confirm Channel 5 had gone for a final blow out in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe be available permanently, I might be able to go back to guessing UAH within one or two 10ths 🙁

  55. Roy Spencer confirms that Channel 6 & 7 are unaffected by the Channel 5 failure, both show around 0.4degC decline in the past 9 days

    His plot of the two NOAA satellites AMSU5 shows a similar fall in 600mb GAT.

    While unusual, a fall of this rate/magnitude in March is not unprecedented, see March 2004 & 2007 for similar events. It will be interesting to watch what happens for the rest of the month.

    As an aside, March CET in the UK is now on target to be the coldest since 1962 and among the coldest five March months for a century

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