From	Phil Jones	Date	Wed Jan 16 09:23:52 2008
To	Raymond P.
CC	Michael E. Mann, Gavin Schmidt
Subject	[Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Edouard Bard]]
Ray, Glad to see you're onto this. Obviously anything shouldn't make it even worse for Edouard, but you're in contact with him. I'd be happy to sign onto any letter from Science, but this isn't essential. I know the series Courtillot has used (and Pasotti re-uses) came from here, but it isn't what he and the authors says it was. I also know it doesn't make much difference if the correct one was used - given the smoothing. It is just sloppy and a principle thing. The correct data are sitting on our web site and have been since Brohan et al (2006) appeared in JGR. Even the earlier version (HadCRUT2v) would have been OK, but not a specially produced series for a tree-ring reconstruction paper back in 2001/2 and not on our web site. Then there are all the science issues you and Edouard have raised in RC and the EPSL comment. I have had a couple of exchanges with Courtillot. This is the last of them from March 26, 2007. I sent him a number of papers to read. He seems incapable of grasping the concept of spatial degrees of freedom, and how this number can change according to timescale. I also told him where he can get station data at NCDC and GISS (as I took a decision ages ago not to release our station data, mainly because of McIntyre). I told him all this as well when we met at a meeting of the French Academy in early March. What he understands below is my refusal to write a paper for the proceedings of the French Academy for the meeting in early March. He only mentioned this requirement afterwards and I said I didn't have the time to rewrite was already in the literature. It took me several more months of emails to get my expenses for going to Paris! Cheers Phil From Courtillot 26 March 2007 Dear Phil, Sure I understand. Now research wise I would like us to remain in contact. Unfortunately, I have too little time to devote to what is in principle not in my main stream of research and has no special funding. But still I intend to try and persist. I find these temperature and pressure series fascinating. I have two queries: 1) how easy is it for me (not a very agile person computer wise) to obtain the files of data you use in the various global or non global averages of T (I mean the actual montly data in each 5° box prior to any processing, including computation of the "temperature anomaly")? How do I do it? What I would like to be able to extract is for instance all of the data within a given 5° by 5° box with their dates (so: lat, lon, time, value). I understand these are monthly means, though we find that there may be some quite important information in the daily values which is likely lost on monthly averaging, but this is another question... 2) I know you answered my question but still I have trouble grasping the answer. Could you explain how the global T average for periods say before 1900 can haev a total uncertainty under 0.2°C back to 1850. This can only be true, given the data distribution in the Rayner et al paper, if T is an incredibly smooth function of location. Did you really answer me that by extracting from the recent (post 1950) database data with the same geographical and temporal distributions as the 1850-1900 data you get almost the same result as with the full modern data (with an uncertainty just above 0.1°C). This seems truly amazing, and would never work with the global magnetic field data I am accustomed to work on. Yet it does not seem to me that climate varies as slowly and with as long spatial scales as the magnetic field... I will very much appreciate your comments and help on those. Thank you again for having come to our meeting. Yours very sincerely, Vincent -- Vincent Courtillot Professor of Geophysics University Paris 7, Director Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Member Institut Universitaire de France, Member Academia Europaea and French Academy of Sciences President, Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism, American Geophysical Union President, Scientific Council, City of Paris Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:20:57 -0500 From: Michael Mann Reply-To: mann@psu.edu Organization: Penn State University User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (Windows/20071031) To: Phil Jones , Gavin Schmidt Subject: [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Edouard Bard]] X-UEA-Spam-Score: 0.3 X-UEA-Spam-Level: / X-UEA-Spam-Flag: NO update from Ray P... mike -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Fwd: Edouard Bard] Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:20:59 -0600 From: Raymond P. [1] To: Group RealClimate [2] References: [3]<478CC27D.1040900@meteo.psu.edu> -- Michael E. Mann Associate Professor Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC) Department of Meteorology Phone: (814) 863-4075 503 Walker Building FAX: (814) 865-3663 The Pennsylvania State University email: [4]mann@psu.edu University Park, PA 16802-5013 [5]http://www.met.psu.edu/dept/faculty/mann.htm Content-Type: text/enriched; name="[6]file:///C:/DOCUME~1/MICHAE~1/LOCALS~1/TEMP/nsmail.1" Content-Disposition: inline; filename="[7]file:///C:/DOCUME~1/MICHAE~1/LOCALS~1/TEMP/nsmail.1" X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by f05n05.cac.psu.edu id m0FHKxKM050156 Yes indeed. I am writing a letter to Science today regarding Pasotti's ridiculous article. If anybody things the rest of RC should sign on to that as well, just let me know. I will also have to write a Part III, covering all the junk mentioned by Edouard and by Phil Jones. Courtillot's response (published via a legal device activated where there is the possibility of threatening a libel suit) appeared in Le Monde today. I may give it a week or so for new developments to settle down before writing. For example, Foucart may get a chance to write a response in Le Monde. While I'll wait a bit before doing the RC piece, I plan to send off the letter to Science this week. --Ray On Jan 15, 2008, at 8:26 AM, Michael Mann wrote: fyi, mike -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Edouard Bard Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:59:44 +0000 From: Phil Jones To: gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov CC: Michael E. Mann References: <46E534DD.30206@met.no> <4756A519.4090906@met.no> <4757EFB1.1000608@met.no> <477CB5FA.609@met.no> Some emails within this and an attachment. Send on to Ray Pierrehumbert. Maybe you're aware but things in France are getting bad. One thing might be a letter to Science re the diagram in an editorial in Science. I did talk to the idiot who wrote this, but couldn't persuade him it was rubbish. This isn't the worst - see this email below from Jean Jouzel and Edouard Bard. My French is poor at the best of times, but this all seems unfair pressure on Edouard. See also this in French about me - lucky I can't follow it that well ! I know all this is a storm in a teacup - and I hope I'd show your resilience Mike if this was directed at me. I'm just happy I'm in the UK, and our Royal Society knows who and why it appoints its fellows! In the Science piece, the two Courtillot papers are rejected. I have the journal rejection emails - the other reviewer wasn't quite as strong as mine, but they were awfiul. Cheers Phil From: Jean Jouzel Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Fwd: FYI: Daggers Are Drawn X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-3.0 (shiva.jussieu.fr [134.157.0.166]); Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:07:14 +0100 (CET) X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.92/5483/Mon Jan 14 15:45:01 2008 on shiva.jussieu.fr X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Miltered: at shiva.jussieu.fr with ID 478BEB15.002 by Joe's j-chkmail ( [8]http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-UEA-Spam-Score: 0.3 X-UEA-Spam-Level: / X-UEA-Spam-Flag: NO Dear Phil, Yes the situation is very bad in and I was indeed going to write you to ask somewhat for your help in getting some support to Edouard, which is really needed. Certainly one thing you could do would be to write to the editor of Science at least pointing to the fact that the figure is misleading using again the seasonal above 20°N Briffa et al. data set as global. May be also at some point write something supporting the answer of Edouard and Gilles Delaygue, to EPSL ( or in answering the letter Courtillot has recently written see attached in which he is very critical with respect to your work). I don't know .... Yes I will be in Vienna , this will be a pleasure to meet you With my best Jean 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:rtp1@geosci.uchicago.edu 2. mailto:group@realclimate.org 3. mailto:478CC27D.1040900@meteo.psu.edu 4. mailto:mann@psu.edu 5. http://www.met.psu.edu/dept/faculty/mann.htm 6. file://C:\DOCUME~1\MICHAE~1\LOCALS~1\TEMP\nsmail.1/ 7. file://C:\DOCUME~1\MICHAE~1\LOCALS~1\TEMP\nsmail.1/ 8. http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr/