Here’s some more email excerpts from the recent Climate Research Unit (CRU) scandle, or “Climategate” as it’s now known. These were found by searching the files for the string “lack of warming”. Highlights are mine.
FOI2009\FOIA\mail\1231190304.txt:
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxx>
To: Tim Johns <tim.johns@xxx>, “Folland, Chris” <chris.folland@xxx>
Subject: Re: FW: Temperatures in 2009
Date: Mon Jan 5 16:18:24 2009
Cc: “Smith, Doug” <doug.smith@xxx>, Tim Johns <tim.johns@xxx>Tim, Chris,
I hope you’re not right about the lack of warming lasting
till about 2020. I’d rather hoped to see the earlier Met Office
press release with Doug’s paper that said something like -
half the years to 2014 would exceed the warmest year currently on record, 1998!
Also – relevant to your statement – A1B-AR4 runs
show potential for a distinct lack of warming in the early 21st C, which
I’m sure skeptics would love to see replicated in the real world… (See
the attached plot for illustration but please don’t circulate this any
further as these are results in progress, not yet shared with other
ENSEMBLES partners let alone published).
FOI2009\FOIA\mail\1255352257.txt:
From: Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxx>
To: Michael Mann <mann@xxx>
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider <shs@xxx>, Myles Allen <allen@xxx>, peter stott <peter.stott@xxx>, “Philip D. Jones” <p.jones@xxx>, Benjamin Santer <santer1@xxx>, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxx>, Thomas R Karl <Thomas.R.Karl@xxx>, Gavin Schmidt <gschmidt@xxx>, James Hansen <jhansen@xxx>, Michael Oppenheimer <omichael@xxx>Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in
Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We
had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it
smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a
record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies
baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing
weather).
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global
energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27,
doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained
from the author.)
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a
travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008
shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing
system is inadequate.
FOI2009\FOIA\mail\1255496484.txt:
From: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxx>
To: Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxx>
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:01:24 -0600
Cc: Michael Mann <mann@xxx>, Stephen H Schneider <shs@xxx>, Myles Allen <allen@xxx>, peter stott <peter.stott@xxx>, “Philip D. Jones” <p.jones@xxx>, Benjamin Santer <santer1@xxx>, Thomas R Karl <Thomas.R.Karl@xxx>, Gavin Schmidt <gschmidt@xxx>, James Hansen <jhansen@xxx>, Michael Oppenheimer <omichael@xxx>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by ueamailgate01.uea.ac.uk id n9E71pl4015864<x-flowed>
Dear all,At the risk of overload, here are some notes of mine on the recent
lack of warming. I look at this in two ways. The first is to look at
the difference between the observed and expected anthropogenic trend
relative to the pdf for unforced variability. The second is to remove
ENSO, volcanoes and TSI variations from the observed data.Both methods show that what we are seeing is not unusual. The second
method leaves a significant warming over the past decade.
FOI2009\FOIA\mail\1255550975.txt:
From: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxx>
To: Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxx>
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:09:35 -0600
Cc: Michael Mann <mann@xxx>, Stephen H Schneider <shs@xxx>, Myles Allen <allen@xxx>, peter stott <peter.stott@xxx>, “Philip D. Jones” <p.jones@xxx>, Benjamin Santer <santer1@xxx>, Thomas R Karl <Thomas.R.Karl@xxx>, Gavin Schmidt <gschmidt@xxx>, James Hansen <jhansen@xxx>, Michael Oppenheimer <omichael@xxx><x-flowed>
Kevin,I didn’t mean to offend you. But what you said was “we can’t account
for the lack of warming at the moment”. Now you say “we are no where
close to knowing where energy is going”. In my eyes these are two
different things — the second relates to our level of understanding,
and I agree that this is still lacking.Tom.
++++++++++++++++++
Kevin Trenberth wrote:
> Hi Tom
> How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where
> close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to
> make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy
> budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the
> climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless
> as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a
> travesty!
> Kevin
