Hiding the decline - in the number of storms

While drafting a post on ‘Phil Jones and the ‘expert judgement’ of the IPCC’ recently, a search of the CRU emails threw up a file that did not appear to be relevant to what I was looking for, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Since sceptics started raking through the Climategate emails, interest has focused on just a few dozen of the messages that contain egregiously alarming revelations about how climate research and the IPCC process is conducted. A large number of the emails appear to contain nothing particularly noteworthy. This is strange, given that they all seemed to have been grouped in a single folder for a purpose.

There is some agreement among systems analysts who have considered how this material became public that the FOI2009 folder that appeared on a Russian server in November last year was downloaded  in toto from CRU, and had probably been compiled there for a reason or reasons unknown. If this is the case, then it must have been the result of an exhaustive review of, and a process of selection from, a vast amount of material. The folder certainly doesn’t contain the whole contents of any particular mailbox.

The hacked or leaked file was named  FOI2009.zip  and contained a folder FOI2009, which was divided into two sub-folders: documents and emails. The emails folder is made up of 1073 files each of which contains an email, but many of these also contain chains of messages that are relevant to the primary message at the top of the page. The file that I came across (1168467907.txt) was one of these and contained five messages.

The primary email (dated 10^th January 2007) is from Phil Jones to Sir Brain Hoskins, with copies to: “Susan Solomon”, “Kevin Trenberth”, “Brian Hoskins”, martin.manning, “Matilde Rusticucci”, “Phil Jones”, “Peter Lemke”, “Jurgen Willebrand”, “Nathan Bindoff”, “zhenlin chen”,”Melinda Marquis”. (The inclusion of Jones and Hoskins in the copies, in spite of their being  the author and recipient of the primary message respectively, suggests that this was a designated mailing list.) All are drafting or contributing authors to the IPCC’s AR4, Working Group 1 (WGI), Summary for Policymakers (SPM) except for Solomon, who is co-Chair of WGI and Marquis who is Deputy Director of the WGI Support Group. Only Jones, Hoskins, Trenberth and Solomon take part in the discussion in the message chain.

The subject under discussion is mid-latitude winds in the context of climate change and extreme weather events, and the way in which research findings relating to this should be summarised in the SPM.  The emails were exchanged just prior to the IPCC plenary session in Paris during early February 2007 that would finalise the text. It is important to note that government representatives who have the last word on the text attended this final meeting. The general subject heading in the SPM is Direct Observations of Recent Climate Change.

In order to consider the contents in chronological order it is necessary to start with the last message at the bottom of the page, or in other words, to read the contents from bottom to top rather than top to bottom.

The earliest message is from Sir Brian Hoskins to Susan Soloman.

(Message 1)

Brian Hoskins wrote: [Review editor of WGI Chapter 3 and a drafting author of the SPM]

Susan [Solomon]

Headline 2

I suggest the following:

At  continental or ocean basin scale, numerous changes in climate have been observed. Mid-latitude westerly winds (and the associated storms) have shifted polewards and strengthened. Other climate changes include precipitation,…..

I have taken the suggestion form SPM_327 to reverse the order of the first sentence.

The westerly winds sentence is essentially that in a headline in the TS.

I should much prefer not to include the bracketed itallicised phrase on storms. The evidence is less strong. There is some evidence for reduced numbers of storms also but no room to say that. It was not headlined in the chapter or the TS.

Best wishes

Brian

 my emphasis

Evidently a piece of copy concerning extreme weather is being hammered into shape and Hoskins has reservations because a claim of increased storm intensity may not be adequately supported by scientific evidence and there is also evidence that the frequency of storms is decreasing.

The next message is from Kevin Trenberth (a cooridinating a lead author on WGI Chapter 3) to Sir Brian Hoskins.

 (Message 2)

At 8:54 AM -0700 1/9/07, Kevin Trenberth wrote:

Hi Brian

Do you need the first part?  Are you rewriting the headline on SPM p5 lines 35-37 or are you adding an extra bullet on circulation? I thought we agreed on the latter, but your piece seems more like the former.

If we left the headline alone and added:

* Changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation are apparent and, in particular,  the mid-latitude westerly winds have shifted polewards and strengthened, altering storm tracks.

would be an alternative approach.  I think it is helpful to mention storm tracks but not be specific about how they have changed.

What do you think?

Kevin

my emphasis

Hoskins’ initial reservations about the evidence of stronger winds, and the possibility that the frequency of  storms is decreasing have disappeared and been replaced by wording that suggests that only  the change in wind patterns is leading to stronger winds and worse storms. Evidently space cannot be found for any caveats.

At this point, one of the biggest guns in the IPCC process, Susan Solomons, provides priority and direction to the discussion, as any good chairman should. At all costs the scientists must deliver what the government representatives want to hear.

(Message 3)

Susan Solomon [Co-Chair, Working Group I, AR4) wrote:

Thanks Brian and Kevin for the help.
I agree with Brian about reversing the order in the headline sentence but agree with Kevin that a separate bullet is most helpful. I suggest we keep the headline short and simple and just leave the language we have about wind patterns being one of several things changing there. Otherwise it could be read as putting the circulation change into a very high prominence in the headline which isn’t quite  the emphasis we were discussing, I think.

I tried to combine the suggestions and to keep things clear enough that governments won’t complain about lack of specifics. If you look over the comments, you will have seen that above all they will not tolerate vague language. Anybody who was in Shanghai (or any other IPCC meeting) can attest to that so please please everybody help make things as specific as we can.

So my suggestion for the wind pattern bullet is:

Mid-latitude westerly wind speeds have increased in both hemispheres since about the 1960s. This has caused storm tracks to move towards higher latitudes. {3.6}

Regarding the headline that proceeds it, can we consider something like this:

At continental or ocean basin scales, numerous changes in climate have been observed. These include sea ice extent, precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns, and [aspects of extreme weather] OR  [the frequency of heavy precipitation and of heat waves, the intensity  and duration of drought, and the intensity of hurricanes and typhoons.]

The ice sheets have been taken out of the above because they are moving to a consolidated sea level subsection, to deal with several requests for that.
Is the new option after wind patterns too specific? I am a little concerned that we will be challenged on that. We could keep what we have: ‘aspects of extreme weather’. Equally, I am worried that they will challenge the vagueness of ‘extreme weather’ so that is why you see two alternatives here.

Thoughts?
Susan

my emphasis

What should a poor scientist do when the bosses want specifics? As Hoskins’ first message shows, there aren’t any other than to say that the scientific evidence for mid-latitude winds becoming a problem is a bit flimsy.

But Hoskins bounces back and he, if no one else, is still worried about the evidence that even if winds are strengthening, the frequency of storms may be decreasing. It’s difficult to blame extreme weather on climate change if there seems to be less of it about.

(Message 4)

Dear All

To me a headline should be kept simple with the detail in the bullets
below, so I prefer the simple version with “aspects of extreme weather”
but I guess I am outvoted on that!

For the first part of the bullet on the westerlies I should prefer to
revert to including the shift and also using the word strengthen rather
than increase (a number, such as the speed, increases):

Mid-latitude westerly winds have shifted polewards and stengthened since
about the 1960s.

The next part on the storms is problematic. I agree with Kevin that we
should steer clear of the causal langauage Susan had used. However
Kevin’s words seemed to link a shift in the storm tracks with an
increase in the winds. Also, as reviewed in 3.5.3, some papers suggest
that, in addition to a poleward shift in the storm tracks and an
increase in their average intensity, there is a decrease in the number
of storms . This is probably too much for the bullet, so that a less
specific version may be required.

I think the whole bullet could be:

Mid-latitude westerly winds have shifted polewards and stengthened since
about the 1960s, with associated changes in storms. (3.5)

Brian

my emphasis

This is a really skilful bit of drafting that completely avoids the real scientific issues. The wording implies that storms are becoming more of a problem, and also provides for any challenge based on the evidence of decreasing storm frequency with the weasel words, ‘associated changes’.

Finally, Phil Jones joins in, suggesting that if mentioning the storms is inconvenient, then why not just leave them out.

(Message 5)

Dear All,
Agree with Brian’s new bullet. I still think we will
get comments about what changes with storms. If this
is going to lead somewhere we don’t want it and cause
problems, then the final part is likely best removed.

Reading it again, better if we say .. since the 1960s.
About is a little vague.

Back in CRU on Friday. I may be able to get this hotel link
to work tomorrow morning.

Cheers
Phil

my emphasis

Evidently Jones had the last word. The final wording in the SPM is as follows:

Mid-latitude westerly winds have strengthened in both hemispheres since the 1960s. {3.5}

Summary for Policymakers, Page 8

We have come a very long way from Hoskins’ first message to Susan Solomon.

When I fist glanced through this message – looking for something else – I wondered how it had found its way into the FOI209 folder. It seemed to be innocuous; just a group of scientists discussing the wording in a report. So I read it more carefully and realised that this email is in fact just the  kind of ‘dirty washing’ that the participants would really want to be kept out of reach of any Freedom of Information Act requests.

Ever since the Climategate scandal broke, and led on to Himalayagate and all the other criticisms of the IPCC WG II report, we have been told that none of the revelations have any impact on the big picture; the fundamental evidence for AGW. Yet here we find some of the leading figures in the IPCC process drafting what is supposed to be an objective assessment of research findings in a way that is astonishing.

Apparently there is something going on that is every bit as troubling as ‘hiding the decline’, rigging the peer review process, or refusing to make data available for scrutiny. It seems to reveal a culture where the priority is not science at all, but presentation. And in this instance it applies to the IPCC’s most influential document, the Working Group I Summary for Policymakers. Worse, it involves some of the biggest names in climate science.

It is true that the nature of mid-latitude storms does not provide clinching evidence either one way or the other in the climate debate. But that is not the point.

Assessment, as applied in the IPCC process, is to a great extent a matter of judgement. The most important revelation that the Climategate emails provide is an insight into the culture that exists within climate science. This has been variously described as ‘tribalism’, ‘circling the wagons’, and more recently by Judith Curry in an interview with Discover Magazine as ‘sloppiness’. It is these characteristics, far more than any specific instance of wrong-doing that cast doubt on the evidence for AGW.

When people talk about the fundamental evidence for AGW not being called into question they are considering only a few specific allegations.  But we rely entirely on the IPCC for that evidence. It is not too much to say that the evidence for AGW is the IPCC. If the IPCC assessment process is contaminated by a culture that is essentially concerned with presentation, then the whole of that process, and the conclusions that have been reached about global warming, require fresh scrutiny.

The above email suggests that, in this case at least, the IPCC’s priority was massaging the evidence to suit the message. In how many other instances is this the case?

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H/T to KevinUK for his superb Climategate database with advanced search feature