Briffa on Yamal
Keith Briffa and Tom Melvin have posted an interesting and thorough examination of the Yamal data here:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/
This now supersedes much if not all additional analysis I had considered for possible future posts.
delayed.oscillator 
“This now supersedes much if not all additional analysis I had considered for possible future posts”
Ops! Maybe a summary for lay people would be interesitng. I guess most of us won’t be able to go through all this new paper (at least understanding it 🙂 ).
What is still striking to me is the smoothing question I posed here… It still seems that the raw data is not so hockey-stick shaped (lower panel) as the smoothed data (upper panel, “40-year low-pass cubic smoothing spline”):
Click to access figG.pdf
In fact the data seems to vary in a similar range from 1920 to the end of the 90s.
*Well, I must confess that’s just the denialist talking point of the day in the forum I usually frequent 😛
climafuturo
October 29, 2009 at 7:07 pm
DO,
I wonder what you know about the typical growth curve of trees, anything you can add would be appreciated. It’s not my area, but again in this response Briffa’s RCS refuses to follow the average growth curve of the tree rings.
If the older trees tend upward in later years, the method MUST fit the typical shape. Then if the ‘recent’ older trees produce HS we really have something. I for one would be thrilled to have something.
Imagine if we had a big enough dataset that historic trees of the same species and location had an age which could match the live trees. That would be very cool
Currelntly, I’m lazily downloading Briffa’s latest data into a TS matrix, when it’s done I’ll fit some of my own curves. If they follow tree age correctly and produce the same graphs I’ll surprise a bunch of tAV readers including myself.
The data is the data though. I doubt very very much that I’ll get an unprecedented warming.
Can you use R?
Jeff Id
October 30, 2009 at 12:41 am
Hi DC, Jeff, CF,
Sorry for the delay, traveling again. I have another post in the hopper that maybe I’ll go ahead and publish, although I’m mindful of Simon Donner’s warning of the Climate Filibuster.
Jeff, I’m having trouble reconciling your relatively reasonable tone while commenting here with the tone you display in your recent posts on Yamal at your own blog.
delayedoscillator
November 2, 2009 at 12:53 am
I was alerted to Briffa’s article too. I was working on a post on problems in McIntyre’s analysis, so I decided to review and incorporate Briffa’s response into that post.
http://deepclimate.org/2009/10/30/briffa-teaches-but-will-mcintyre-ever-learn/
DO, if you have time I’d appreciate your take on it.
Deep Climate
October 30, 2009 at 9:00 pm
I get frustrated with the head in the sand style responses. Briffa knows these issues exist. [snip] I first read of their official existence in his own work!
Anyway, you asked to keep the tone nice here, so I do. I’m hoping for some further insight into the problem.
Jeff Id
November 2, 2009 at 5:10 pm
[…] (no <blink> tag?), the following statement (since that time stated in a more reasonable tone here): For some reason EVERY RCS CORRECTION Briffa can conceive of refuses to turn upward to fit the […]
Yamal V: … but they pull me back in … « delayed.oscillator
November 3, 2009 at 4:27 am