From: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
To: "Neville Nicholls" <N.Nicholls@bom.gov.au>
Subject: RE: Misc
Date: Wed Jul  6 15:07:45 2005

    Neville,
        Mike's response could do with a little work, but as you say he's got the tone
    almost dead on.  I hope I don't get a call from congress !  I'm hoping that no-one
    there realizes I have a US DoE grant and have had this (with Tom W.) for the last 25
    years.
        I'll send on one other email received for interest.
    Cheers
    Phil
   At 14:21 06/07/2005, you wrote:

     Thanks Phil.
     I had seen the estimates of 0.12C for UAH 5.2, but wasnt sure if the version producing
     these trends had all the months corrected, and that John was happy with the corrections
     (I had heard that his initial estimate was that the change made a major difference to
     the trends, but that later calulations didnt support this). I think I have a pretty good
     idea now of the trends in the various data sets.
     I have seen the Mears/Wentz paper, but will watch out for John's paper (I know I could
     have asked John about all of this, but I suspect he feels a bit over-burdened and
     harrassed at the moment, and I didnt want to add to the pressure on him, so thanks for
     passing this stuff on to me).
     I thought Mike Mann's draft response was pretty good - I had expected something more
     vigorous, but I think he has got the "tone" pretty right. Do you expect to get a call
     from Congress?
     Neville Nicholls
     Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre
     9th Floor, 700 Collins Street
     Docklands,Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
     PO Box 1289K, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA 3001
     Phone: +61 (0)3 9669 4407
     Fax: +61 (0)3 9669 4660
     -----Original Message-----
     From: Phil Jones [[1]mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk]
     Sent: Wed 7/6/2005 5:57 PM
     To: Neville Nicholls
     Subject: Fwd: Misc
       Neville,
           Here's an email from John, with the trend from his latest version
     in.  Also
       has trends for RATPAC and HadAT2. If you can stress in your talks that it is
       more likely the sondes are wrong - at least as a group. Some may be OK
       individually. The tropical ones are the key, but it is these that least
     is know
       about except for a few regions. The sondes clearly show too much cooling in
       the stratosphere (when compared to MSU4), and I reckon this must
       also affect their upper troposphere trends as well. So, John may be putting
       too much faith in them wrt agreement with UAH.
          Happy for you to use the figure, if you don't pass on to anyone else.
     Watch
       out for Science though and the Mears/Wentz paper if it ever comes out.
         Also, do point out that looking at surface trends from 1998 isn't very
     clever.
       Cheers
       Phil
     >Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2005 07:59:51 -0500
     >From: John Christy <john.christy@nsstc.uah.edu>
     >User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.4)
     >Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1
     >X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
     >To: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
     >Subject: Misc
     >X-NSSTC-MailScanner: Found to be clean
     >X-NSSTC-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam (whitelisted),
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     >
     >Hi Phil:
     >
     >I've been getting round-about versions of rumors concerning our newly
     >adjusted version 5.2 LT dataset.  I believe I had indicated earlier to you
     >that the correction was within our published margin of error.  In any case
     >here are the numbers that describe various aspects of v5.2
     >1979-2004
     >
     >Global Trend +0.115 UAH,  +0.125 RATPAC and +0.137 HadAT  (note, when
     >subsampled for the same latitudes in which sonde observations are
     >available, UAH and HadAT are almost exactly the same.)
     >
     >Update of site by site comparison of UAH LT 5.2 and SH radiosondes from
     >Christy and Norris 2004:
     >
     >All 87 SH stations, no adjustments  Raobs + 0.028  UAH +0.040
     >74 best sites with adjustments      Raobs +0.030  UAH +0.054
     >
     >These SH changes from the original publication were very minor because
     >most stations were outside the tropics where the diurnal error had
     >essentially no impact.
     >
     >A paper by Sherwood claims that Day minus Night is a legitimate way to go
     >about looking at sonde problems.  The real problem though is that Day
     >minus Night is only an indicator of a sonde change, it does not determine
     >the change itself.  Most notorious is the Philipps Mark III to Vaisala
     >RS-80 where the night warmed by about 0.3 C and the day by a little bit
     >less, which means the Day minus Night reveals a negative shift when in
     >fact both ob times have a significant positive shift (these sondes form a
     >signifciant part of the LKS dataset).  Similar results occur for US VIZ
     >mini-art 2 to Micro-art software in 1990.
     >
     >I have many other sone comparisons, and all are more consistent with the
     >UAH trends more than RSS and certainly VG.  Indeed,  I was curious to see
     >that your name was on VG's latest paper.  I wish I had time to fill you in
     >on why the addition of the non-linear terms is a red herring (both UAH and
     >RSS have performed the calculations with and without the non-linear terms
     >with no impact on the trends) and why the latitudinal difference for
     >calculating the coefficients leads one astray.  I'm a little nervous now
     >that you may have a "dog in this fight" as we say in Alabama while writing
     >up the IPCC.  I expect my sonde comparisons to be included in the IPCC and
     >I will have further results demonstrating the problems with the Day minus
     >Night technique within a few months.
     >
     >I've lots to do now.  Thanks for listening.
     >
     >John C.
     >
     >--
     >************************************************************
     >John R. Christy
     >Director, Earth System Science Center   voice: 256-961-7763
     >Professor, Atmospheric Science          fax:   256-961-7751
     >Alabama State Climatologist
     >University of Alabama in Huntsville
     >[2]http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/christy.html
     >
     >Mail:   ESSC-Cramer Hall/University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville
     >AL 35899
     >Express:   Cramer Hall/ESSC, 320 Sparkman Dr., Huntsville AL 35805
     >
     Prof. Phil Jones
     Climatic Research Unit        Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
     School of Environmental Sciences    Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
     University of East Anglia
     Norwich                          Email    p.jones@uea.ac.uk
     NR4 7TJ
     UK
     ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Prof. Phil Jones
   Climatic Research Unit        Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
   School of Environmental Sciences    Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
   University of East Anglia
   Norwich                          Email    p.jones@uea.ac.uk
   NR4 7TJ
   UK
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

References

   1. mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk
   2. http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/christy.html

