From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@uea.ac.

uk>
To: Malcolm Hughes
Subject: Fwd: Re: Mitrie: Bristlecones In confidence
Date: Tue Nov 21 09:51:52 2006

Malcolm
sorry , I should have cc'd this message sent to my coauthors some time ago(it
pre-dates the
message to you) , but I was sort of hoping this issue would recede . It would be
useful to
chat about this and other stuff if you are able to phone (afternoon my time
preferably).
Cheers
Keith

Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 11:57:09 +0000

To: Martin Juckes <m.n.juckes@rl.ac.uk>, "Myles Allen" <allen@atm.ox.ac.uk>
From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@uea.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Mitrie: Bristlecones
Cc: anders@misu.su.se, Eduardo.Zorita@gkss.de, hegerl@duke.edu, esper@wsl.ch,
weber@knmi.nl, t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
Martin and all,
I know Franco very well - but he has not worked extensively with the
Bristlecones. I
still believe that it would be wise to involve Malcolm Hughes in this
discussion -
though I recognise the point of view that says we might like to appear (and
be)
independent of the original Mann, Bradley and Hughes team to avoid the
appearance of
collusion. In my opinion (as someone how has worked with the Bristlecone data
hardly at
all!) there are undoubtedly problems in their use that go beyond the strip
bark problem
(that I will come back to later).
The main one is an ambiguity in the nature and consistency of their
sensitivity to
temperature variations. It was widely believed some 2-3 decades ago, that
high-elevation
trees were PREDOMINANTLY responding to temperature and low elevation ones to
available
water supply (not always related in a simple way to measured precipitation) .
However,
response functions ( ie sets of regression coefficients on monthly mean
temperature and
precipitation data derived using principal components regression applied to
the
tree-ring data) have always shown quite weak and temporally unstable
associations
between chronology and climate variations (for the high-elevations trees at
least). The
trouble is that these results are dominated by inter-annual (ie high-
frequency)
variations and apparent instability in the relationships is exacerbated by the
shortness
of the instrumental records that restrict analyses to short periods, and the
large
separation of the climate station records from the sites of the trees. Limited
comparisons between tree-ring density data (which seem to display less
ambiguos
responses) imply that there is a reasonable decadal time scale association and
so
indicate a real temperature signal , on this time scale .The bottom line
though is that
these trees likely represent a mixed temperature and moisture-supply response
that might
vary on longer timescales.
The discussion is further complicated by the fact that the first PC of
"Western US"
trees used in the Mann et al. analyses is derived from a mixture of species
(not just
Bristlecones ) and they are quite varied in their characteristics , time span,
and
effective variance spectra . Many show low interannual variance and a long-
term
declining trend , up until about 1850 , when the Bristlecones (and others)
show the
remarkable increasing trend up until the end of the record. The earlier
negative trend
could be (partly or more significantly) a consequence of the LACK of
detrending to allow
for age effects in the measurements (ie standardisation) - the very early
sections of
relative high growth were removed in their analysis, but no explicit
standardistion of
the data was made to account for remaining slow width changes resulting from
tree
aging. This is also related to the "strip bark" problem , as these types of
trees will
have unpredictable trends as a consequence of aging and depending on the
precise nature
of each tree's structure .
Another serious issue to be considered relates to the fact that the PC1 time
series in
the Mann et al. analysis was adjusted to reduce the positive slope in the
last 150
years (on the assumption - following an earlier paper by Lamarche et al. -
that this
incressing growth was evidence of carbon dioxide fertilization) , by
differencing the
data from another record produced by other workers in northern Alaska and
Canada
(which incidentally was standardised in a totally different way). This last
adjustment
obviously will have a large influence on the quantification of the link
between these
Western US trees and N.Hemisphere temperatures. At this point , it is fair to
say that
this adjustment was arbitrary and the link between Bristlecone pine growth and
CO2 is ,
at the very least, arguable. Note that at least one author (Lisa Gaumlich) has
stated
that the recent growth of these trees could be temperature driven and not
evidence of
CO2 fertilisation.
The point of this message is to show that that this issue is complex , and I
still
believe the "Western US" series and its interpretation in terms of Hemispheric
mean
temperature is perhaps a "Pandora's box" that we might open at our peril!
What does Jan say about this - he is very acquainted with these issues?
cheers
Keith
At 15:01 15/11/2006, Martin Juckes wrote:

Hi,
Concerning Bristlecones, I had a sympathetic reply from Prof. North, but he
deferred to the person who wrote the relevant paragraph in the NAS report
(Franco Biondi) who is firmly of the view that strip-bark bristlecones should
not be used. I've read a few of the articles cited to back up this statement
and I am surprised by the extreme weakness of the evidence. There is one
study of 27 strip-bark pines which shows that they clearly developed
anomalous growth around 1850. Attributing this to CO2 is odd, to say the
least. I'm writing a brief review of the literature which I'll send round in
a few days time.
cheers,
Martin

On Sunday 12 November 2006 22:21, Myles Allen wrote:

> Although it probably doesn't feel like it, it seems to me you're doing
> rather well...
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin Juckes [[1]mailto:m.n.juckes@rl.ac.uk]
> Sent: 10 November 2006 15:24
> To: anders@misu.su.se; Eduardo.Zorita@gkss.de; hegerl@duke.edu;
> esper@wsl.ch; k.briffa@uea.ac.uk; Myles Allen; weber@knmi.nl;
> t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
> Subject: Mitrie
>
> Hello,
>
> well, I've had a few exchanges on climateaudit, and decided to leave
> them to
> it for a few days.
>
> I'm going to send an email to Prof. North of the NAS panel to ask if he
> really
> meant "don't use bristlecones", as he is quoted by McIntyre. I believe
> it
> would be incorrect to select sites on the basis of what the data from
> the
> sites looks like, and this makes up a substantial part of the argument
> in
> Graybill and Idso (1993).
>
> Does anyone know where I can get hold of the categorisation of the Sheep
>
> Mountain trees used by Graybill and Idso (ca534.rwl from the WDC for
> paleoclimatology I think) into "strip-bark" and "full-bark"? I've sent
> an
> email to the WDC query address.
>
> I've also sent of for a publication which is cited by co2science as
> using
> Sargasso Sea data with the dating shifted by 50 years (Loehle, 2004,
> Ecological Modelling). This appears to be a source of considerable
 > confusion
> among the climate sceptics. The shifted series fits nicely with the idea
> that
> the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the 20th century, so there is a
>
> widespread perception that it is being ignored to fudge the results.
>
> Apart from a couple of oversights in the documentation of the data files
>
> McIntyre hasn't come up with much yet. I need to read up a bit more on
> the
> different Tornetraesk/Fennoscandia series. There was an interesting
> discussion on "cherrypicking", with contributors suggesting that testing
> the
> effect of removing each proxy series in turn was "cherrypicking" and
> that
> selecting series based on subjective analysis of what the series look
> like
> would be much better!
>
> I've had a comment from the editor saying that responses to non-refereee
>
> comments are optional, especially if the comments are not relevant to
> the
> paper.
>
> cheers,
> Martin
>
>
>

--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.

Phone: +44-1603-593909
Fax: +44-1603-507784
[2]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/

--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.

Phone: +44-1603-593909
Fax: +44-1603-507784
[3]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/

References

1. mailto:m.n.juckes@rl.ac.uk
2. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
3. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/