January 17, 2005
This is an
open letter to the community from
Chris Landsea.
Dear
colleagues,
After some
prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the
Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to
which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition,
when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was
simply to dismiss my concerns.
With this
open letter to the community, I wish to explain the basis for my decision
and bring awareness to what I view as a problem in the IPCC process. The
IPCC is a group of climate researchers from around the world that every few
years summarize how climate is changing and how it may be altered in the
future due to manmade global warming. I had served both as an author for the
Observations chapter and a Reviewer for the 2nd Assessment Report in 1995
and the 3rd Assessment Report in 2001, primarily on the topic of tropical
cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons). My work on hurricanes, and tropical
cyclones more generally, has been widely cited by the IPCC. For the upcoming
AR4, I was asked several weeks ago by the Observations chapter Lead Author -
Dr. Kevin Trenberth - to provide the writeup for Atlantic hurricanes. As I
had in the past, I agreed to assist the IPCC in what I thought was to be an
important, and politically-neutral determination of what is happening with
our climate.
Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane
section for the AR4's Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a
press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic "Experts to
warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense
hurricane activity" along with other media interviews on the topic. The
result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly
connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by
anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and
reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is
apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in
such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media
sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global
warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.
I found it a
bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had
come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity
today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference
had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting
on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area
of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the
frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any
other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there
was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.
Moreover,
the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible
studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane
will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid
Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest
that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more
intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be
an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century
(Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).
It is beyond
me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda
that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr.
Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the
text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current
scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult
for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment
on hurricane activity. My view is that when people identify themselves as
being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside
current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of
climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in
public policy.
My concerns
go beyond the actions of Dr. Trenberth and his colleagues to how he and
other IPCC officials responded to my concerns. I did caution Dr. Trenberth
before the media event and provided him a summary of the current
understanding within the hurricane research community. I was disappointed
when the IPCC leadership dismissed my concerns when I brought up the
misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the authority of the
IPCC. Specifically, the IPCC leadership said that Dr. Trenberth was speaking
as an individual even though he was introduced in the press conference as an
IPCC lead author; I was told that the media was exaggerating or
misrepresenting his words, even though the audio from the press conference
and interview tells a different story (available on the web directly); and
that Dr. Trenberth was accurately reflecting conclusions from the TAR, even
though it is quite clear that the TAR stated that there was no connection
between global warming and hurricane activity. The IPCC leadership saw
nothing to be concerned with in Dr. Trenberth's unfounded pronouncements to
the media, despite his supposedly impartial important role that he must
undertake as a Lead Author on the upcoming AR4.
It is
certainly true that "individual scientists can do what they wish in their
own rights", as one of the folks in the IPCC leadership suggested. Differing
conclusions and robust debates are certainly crucial to progress in climate
science. However, this case is not an honest scientific discussion conducted
at a meeting of climate researchers. Instead, a scientist with an important
role in the IPCC represented himself as a Lead Author for the IPCC has used
that position to promulgate to the media and general public his own opinion
that the busy 2004 hurricane season was caused by global warming, which is
in direct opposition to research written in the field and is counter to
conclusions in the TAR. This becomes problematic when I am then asked to
provide the draft about observed hurricane activity variations for the AR4
with, ironically, Dr. Trenberth as the Lead Author for this chapter. Because
of Dr. Trenberth's pronouncements, the IPCC process on our assessment of
these crucial extreme events in our climate system has been subverted and
compromised, its neutrality lost. While no one can "tell" scientists what to
say or not say (nor am I suggesting that), the IPCC did select Dr. Trenberth
as a Lead Author and entrusted to him to carry out this duty in a
non-biased, neutral point of view. When scientists hold press conferences
and speak with the media, much care is needed not to reflect poorly upon the
IPCC. It is of more than passing interest to note that Dr. Trenberth, while
eager to share his views on global warming and hurricanes with the media,
declined to do so at the Climate Variability and Change Conference in
January where he made several presentations. Perhaps he was concerned that
such speculation - though worthy in his mind of public pronouncements –
would not stand up to the scrutiny of fellow climate scientists.
I personally
cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both
being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.
As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth's actions and have
retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer
participate in the IPCC AR4.
Sincerely,
Chris Landsea
Attached are the correspondence between myself and key members of the IPCC
FAR,
Download file.
Chris Landsea's more recent comment to
Prometheus at University of Colorado at Boulder CO
A few replies to comments here. As to Fergus
Brown's question about the conference at Lamont-Doherty, that was a very
good meeting where some ground-breaking new work was presented. The
hurricane-climate field, however, is evolving so quickly that there have
been even more research that has been undertaken (like the Vecchi and
Soden paper) as a result of the controversy in the field.
As to Curry reported comments in Norway as
provided by Anders Vallant, Curry's suggesting that we've had more
hurricanes recently than at any point back to 1850 makes me scratch my
head as to why someone would think that we can homogeneously compare
hurricane activity now versus 150 (or even 100) years ago. We've got some
amazing detection tools available now (aircraft, geostationary satellite,
polar orbiting satellites like AMSU and QuikSCAT, buoys, radars, and a lot
more shipping traffic) that we simply didn't have back then. If indeed she
said this (though i do not know if it is true), then Curry's being
incredibly naive about what the hurricane record can tell us.
As for Ike Solem's comments about me
promoting the Lyman et al. study: I've not read nor commented on the paper
in question.
Finally, with regards to Michael Mann's
quoted comments: I would agree with him that modeling of the future is
very uncertain and that it is quite possible that all 18 of these coupled
climate models have it wrong. However, if one wants to make attribution
now of what the cause of the increased hurricane activity we've seen in
the Atlantic since 1995, the Vecchi and Soden study is pretty clear: it
can't be global warming because both the dynamics AND thermodynamics don't
support it, if these models are to be believed.
Chris Landsea
Posted by:
Chris Landsea at Prometheus,
University of Boulder April 28, 2007
Chris Landsea
on New Hurricane Science
Today a new paper by Gabe Vecchi and Brian
Soden has been published:
Vecchi G. A., B. J. Soden (2007), Increased
tropical Atlantic wind shear in model projections of global warming, Geophys.
Res. Lett., 34, L08702, doi:10.1029/2006GL028905. (PDF)
My reading of the paper by Vecchi and Soden
is that this is a very important contribution to the understanding of how
global warming is affecting hurricane activity. The study thoroughly
examines how the wind shear and other parameters that can alter the number
and intensity of hurricanes because of manmade global warming. What they
found - surprisingly - is that in the Atlantic that the wind shear should
increase significantly over a large portion of where hurricanes occur -
making it more difficult for hurricanes to form and grow. This was
identified in all of the 18 global climate models they examined. (Perhaps
it's not that surprising given that Knutson/Tuleya 2004 showed some of the
same signal for the more reliable models back then. Now the signal is in ALL
of the CGCMs.) Even the MPI changes in the Atlantic appear mixed, due to the
smaller SST increases there (with more uniform upper trop temp changes)
compared with the rest of the global tropics/subtropics.
One implication to me is that this further
provides evidence that the busy period we've seen in the Atlantic hurricanes
since 1995 is due to natural cycles, rather than manmade causes.
We've seen
a big reduction in wind shear in the last thirteen hurricane seasons, which
is OPPOSITE to the signal that Vecchi and Soden have linked to manmade
global warming changes. Another implication is that this paper reconfirms
earlier work that suggests that global warming will cause very small changes
to Atlantic hurricanes, even several decades from now.
Follow up Comments:
A few replies to
comments here. As to Fergus Brown's question about the conference at
Lamont-Doherty, that was a very good meeting where some ground-breaking new
work was presented. The hurricane-climate field, however, is evolving so
quickly that there have been even more research that has been undertaken
(like the Vecchi and Soden paper) as a result of the controversy in the
field.
As to Curry reported comments in Norway as provided by Anders Vallant,
Curry's suggesting that we've had more hurricanes recently than at any point
back to 1850 makes me scratch my head as to why someone would think that we
can homogeneously compare hurricane activity now versus 150 (or even 100)
years ago. We've got some amazing detection tools available now (aircraft,
geostationary satellite, polar orbiting satellites like AMSU and QuikSCAT,
buoys, radars, and a lot more shipping traffic) that we simply didn't have
back then. If indeed she said this (though i do not know if it is true),
then Curry's being incredibly naive about what the hurricane record can tell
us.
Yesterday, in a lecture at the Norwegian
Academy of Sciences, Judith Curry said that hurricanes are becoming more
frequent due to global warming. She said that the number of hurricanes
has doubled since 1970 and is the highest ever since 1850. According to
the newspaper article she did not express any hesitation with regard to
the certainty of the link between more, stronger hurricanes and global
warming.
Posted by:
Anders
Valland at April 18, 2007
As for Ike Solem's
comments about me promoting the Lyman et al. study: I've not read nor
commented on the paper in question.
Finally, with regards to Michael Mann's quoted comments: I would agree with
him that modeling of the future is very uncertain and that it is quite
possible that all 18 of these coupled climate models have it wrong. However,
if one wants to make attribution now of what the cause of the increased
hurricane activity we've seen in the Atlantic since 1995, the Vecchi and
Soden study is pretty clear: it can't be global warming because both the
dynamics AND thermodynamics don't support it, if these models are to be
believed.
Chris Landsea
Posted by: Chris Landsea April 28, 2007
In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
research and educational purposes.
For a related look at the growing
Technocracy of the New World Order see:
TechnoFascism Is Totalitarianism
Hidden in the Form of Democracy
The Carbon
Currency proposal is only as good as the science on which it was
based.
Peak Oil Theory
was based on the unscientific theory that oil is derived from fossils
and therefore its supply is limited to "reserves". The Peak Oil
Theory is also based on the
questionable faith that the oil companies and their puppets will tell
us honestly how much oil they have in reserve.
Global Warming
Theory is based on very unscientific theory that CO2 created by the
combustion of "fossil fuels" has a significant and deleterious effect
on global temperatures.
For the OTHER
Side of Peak Oil "Theory" see:
Peak Oil Introduction
-
2
The Peak Oil Myth-
2 -
3
Peak Oil is a Myth based on Ignorance of Russian
/ Ukrainian Science -
2 -
3 -
4 -
5 -
6 -
7
Peak Oil Is a Scam to Promote World Depopulation
- 2 - 3 - 4
Scientific Abstracts on Peak Oil
-
2
For the OTHER
SIDE of Global Warming "Theory" see:
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© 2007, Allen Aslan Heart / White Eagle Soaring of the Little Shell Pembina Band, a
Treaty
Tribe of the Ojibwe Nation
