WUWT - cherry picking again

Water Vapour
The Watts nail in the coffin of AGW headline:

Another IPCC AR5 reviewer speaks out: no trend in global water vapor

Posted on December 14, 2012by Guest Blogger

New global water vapor findings contradict second draft of IPCC Assessment Report 5 (AR5)

Well, the paper this blogger / expert reviewer is behind a paywall so we have to assume that what he quotes is correct. But a quick search pulls up this paper

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-86-2-245

This from the abstract TPW=total precipitable water:
...Further, we found out that the TPW anomalies are driven by the global surface temperature anomalies, but with a lag.

and from the text:

Time series plots of monthly and annual anomalies of TPW for the two datasets are shown in Figs. 8a and 8b, respectively. Also included in Fig. 8 is the global surface temperature anomaly, computed based on NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) global surface temperature data (Hansen et al. 1999).

The first 3 yr (1988–90) and part of 1996 show significant discrepancies between the anomalies of the two TPW datasets. There is, however, a good agreement for most parts of the other years. Linear regressionsbetween the two datasets show a correlation coefficient of 0.66 for the monthly anomalies and 0.74 for the annual anomalies. TPW anomalies are closely correlated to surface temperature anomalies. The correlation with surface temperature is higher for R-2 than for NVAP (Fig. 8d). The maximum cross correlation between TPW and surface temperature is reachedwhen the temperature leads the TPW by 2 months and equals 0.67 for R-2 and0.50 for NVAP. This suggests that precipitable water anomalies are driven by the temperature anomalies.

 

The problem is which cherry to pick?!!!!

 

 

Then of course Watts puts his foot in the wet and smelly with this blog post:

IPCC AR5 draft leaked, contains game-changing admission of enhanced solar forcing – as well as a lack of warming to match model projections, and reversal on ‘extreme weather’

Posted on December 13, 2012by Guest Blogger

So in this headline post we have a total misreading of a document. One of the authors  (and surely he should know) sais so on Australian Radio: .

The leaked IPCC drafts cover a range of subjects from the quality of climate models to measurements of sea level rise and Arctic ice loss.

Professor Steve Sherwood is a director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.

He is also a lead author of chapter seven of the IPCC report, which happens to be the one the sceptics are claiming for their side.

But Professor Sherwood is scornful of the idea that the chapter he helped write confirms a greater role for solar and other cosmic rays in global warming.

STEVE SHERWOOD: Oh that's completely ridiculous. I'm sure you could go and read those paragraphs yourself and the summary of it and see that we conclude exactly the opposite, that this cosmic ray effect that the paragraph is discussing appears to be negligible.

MARK COLVIN: They're saying that it is the first indication that the IPCC recognises something called solar forcing.

STEVE SHERWOOD: It's not the first time it recognises it. What it shows is that we looked at this. We look at everything. The IPCC has a very comprehensive process where we try to look at all the influences on climate and so we looked at this one.

And there have been a couple of papers suggesting that solar forcing affects climate through cosmic ray/cloud interactions, but most of the literature on this shows that that doesn't actually work.

MARK COLVIN: So you're saying that you've managed to basically eliminate this idea that sunspots or whatever are more responsible for global warming than human activity.

STEVE SHERWOOD: Based on the peer-reviewed literature that's available now, that looks extremely unlikely.

MARK COLVIN: So what have these people done? Is this just a case of cherry-picking a sentence?

STEVE SHERWOOD: Yeah, it's a pretty severe case of that, because even the sentence doesn't say what they say and certainly if you look at the context, we're really saying the opposite.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3654926.htm

It looks as if IPCC has played a blinder.

They can see where the "skeptics" will find inconsitancies and then clarify before publishing and all for free

They also show that sketics cannot read or comprehend!.

 

Defunct code found in Stolen data

Robert Greiner you state (on wattsupwiththat):

Line 8
This is where the magic happens. Remember that array we have of valid temperature readings? And, remember that random array of numbers we have from line two? Well, in line 4, those two arrays are interpolated together.

The interpol() function will take each element in both arrays and “guess” at the points in between them to create a smoothing effect on the data. This technique is often used when dealing with natural data points, just not quite in this manner.

The main thing to realize here, is, that the interpol() function will cause the valid temperature readings (yrloc) to skew towards the valadj values.


Lets look at a bit more of that code:
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)
;
;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy+yearlyadj,tslow=tslow
;oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=20
;
filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy,tslow=tslow
oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=21

yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)
Does not this line give a yearly adjustment value interpolated from the 20 year points?

filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy,tslow=tslow oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=21
Does not this line plot data derived from yyy

;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy+yearlyadj,tslow=tslow
;oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=20
The smoking gun line!!!!
Does not his line plot data derived from yyy+yearlyadj The FUDGED FIGURE
BUT............
IT'S COMMENTED OUT!!

This is further backed up by the end of file:
plot,[0,1],/nodata,xstyle=4,ystyle=4
;legend,['Northern Hemisphere April-September instrumental temperature',$
; 'Northern Hemisphere MXD',$
; 'Northern Hemisphere MXD corrected for decline'],$
; colors=[22,21,20],thick=[3,3,3],margin=0.6,spacing=1.5
legend,['Northern Hemisphere April-September instrumental temperature',$
'Northern Hemisphere MXD'],$
colors=[22,21],thick=[3,3],margin=0.6,spacing=1.5

To me this looks as if 'Northern Hemisphere MXD corrected for decline' would have been printed in colour 20 - just the same as the smoking gun line. HOWEVER you will note that this section is commented out also.

This code was written in 1998. If it had been implemented in any document then there would have been no leaked emails about hiding the decline!

So in my view this is code left in after a quick look-see.

Remember engineers ans scientist are human and play if bored and do not always tidy up.
have a look at:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/index.html

Additional
From wuwt and woodfortrees
....
Here’s Gavin of RC on the subject (which was quoted by “Norman” in comments on your previous posting):

“It was an artificial correction to check some calibration statistics to see whether they would vary if the divergence was an artifact of some extra anthropogenic impact. It has never been used in a published paper (though something similar was explained in detail in this draft paper by Osborn). It has nothing to do with any reconstruction used in the IPCC reports.”

And indeed, in the same set of comments, “Morgan” pointed out that the Osborn et al. paper explicitly describes this step:

“To overcome these problems, the decline is artificially removed from the calibrated tree-ring density series, for the purpose of making a final calibration. The removal is only temporary, because the final calibration is then applied to the unadjusted data set (i.e., without the decline artificially removed). Though this is rather an ad hoc approach, it does allow us to test the sensitivity of the calibration to time scale, and it also yields a reconstruction whose mean level is much less sensitive to the choice of calibration period.”

I’m not sure which one of these your particular code snippet is doing, but either seem perfectly reasonable explanations to me – and both require the code to be added and them removed again. The lazy programmer’s way of doing this is by commenting and uncommenting.


If some hacker accessed some code illegally which contains commented out sections:
1. you do not know the status of the code - development or an issue or final issued. How can you criticise it?
2. Presence of commented out code or separate programme (that this thread is about) does not prove intent to commit fraud. As someone else commented the presence of unwritten code written by the invisible pink unicorn that says invisibly "this code creates a hockey stick" will not stand up in a court of law. To use use the argument here that "it could have been used so it must show intent to commit fraud" is disengenious to say the least.
Mike
20/2/11


WUWT entry

briffa_sep98_e.pro
Line 4:
; Reads Harry’s regional timeseries and outputs the 1600-1992 portion
Line 10:
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$

2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor


========================

Notice that phrase "fudge factor" doesn't sound like hiding to me!

========================
Lines 53-70
; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION

I feel that briffa_sep98_e.pro is the encoding of a lie.

did you notice this:

;****** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE*********
Hiding????
Next file calibrate_nhrecon
; Specify period over which to compute the regressions (stop in 1960 to avoid
; the decline that affects tree-ring density records)
next file recon_overpeck
; Specify period over which to compute the regressions (stop in 1940 to avoid
; the decline
(I think they mean 1960 !! to agree with the code that follows)
Next File recon_esper.pro
recon_mann.pro
recon2.pro
recon_jones.pro
recon_tornyamataim.pro
All the same comment added in the header

Hiding?? I do not think so

recon_tornyamataim.pro
Seems to be the later version of your files:
densadj=reform(rawdat(2:3,*))
ml=where(densadj eq -99.999,nmiss)
densadj(ml)=!values.f_nan

Note no yearlyadj no valadj
So which programme was used to publish??