date: Wed Feb 6 13:26:28 2008 from: Phil Jones subject: Re: London meeting to: Edouard BARD Edouard, Away last week and catching up. I can't make London as I'm teaching here in Norwich. No-one else can go. It seems like an odd meeting in London -surprised they got Jim Hansen to talk. I've sent an email to Jim to warn him. Jim won't likely be there on the second day - so I've asked him to make sure there are a few reasoned scientists there and they know what might be coming when Vincent gets up. I don't know the others in the UK - seem like geologists and oceanographers, so there may not be many climate types there. I do know one of them so will send him a quick email. Cheers Phil At 10:45 05/02/2008, you wrote: Dear Phil, Sorry to bother you again with this stuff, but it is important to keep you tuned. Besides the informations sent previously (e.g. my messages pasted below), you should know that Courtillot keeps saying and writing publicly that you did errors in your publications and datasets available to the public. A further example is the video of his talk available on the IPGP web site. In the front row of the packed audience, you can even see the president of CNRS (Ms. Brechignac) and the former Director of Scientific Research of the Ministry (Ms Giacobino). I paste below some comments (in French) that I wrote to colleagues about when Courtillot lies about your work. The main reason for my email is also to inform you about the forthcoming meeting in London during which Courtillot will give a keynote lecture just after Jim Hansen ! The title of his presentation is particularly appealing "Which global warming?". This is the annual meeting of the British Geophysical Association "New Advances in Geophysics" on the theme "Geophysics of Global Climate Change". "The aim of the meeting is to bring together the diverse strands of geophysical research into climate change". The six keynote speakers are the following Dr. Jim Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Dr. Heiko Palike, NOC, Southampton Prof. Vincent Courtillot, IPG, Paris Dr. David Pyle, Oxford Dr. Mark Siddall, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Prof. Paul Wilson, NOC, Southampton More info can be found on the following web site: [1]http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/~heiko/NAG2008/NAG2008.html I hope that you will be able to attend or that somebody from your lab will be able to respond to the detailed accusations propagated by Courtillot. Best wishes, Edouard ***************************************************************** J'ai pris le temps de regarder la conférence de Courtillot à l'IPGP le 10 janvier disponible en ligne sur le site web de l'IPGP: [2]http://www.ipgp.jussieu.fr/ , cliquer sur actualités, séminaires, vidéos, 10 janvier) Beaucoup de choses à redire, mais ce serait trop long (en particulier au sujet de la pirouette de la translation + homothétie pour l'irradiance solaire). Au sujet de la courbe qu'ils ont intitulée Tglobe, Courtillot dit très distinctement: Fichier "Exposé I" à 23 min et 40 sec.: "Cette courbe est bien de Monsieur Jones. Elle est bien dans son article de 1999 de Reviews of Geophysics." Fichier "Conclusions" à 7 min. et 30 sec.: "C'est eux qui se sont trompés. Quand nous, nous avions pris cette courbe, il y a cinq ans dans l'article de Reviews of Geophysics, on a bien évidemment admis que la légende de Jones et ses données étaient vraies. Ce sont bien ses données, mais sa légende est fausse". Toute personne qui prend ce fameux papier de Jones et al. (1999, Rev. Geophys.) peut constater que ces deux assertions sont totalement FAUSSES. A noter que la présidente du CNRS est assise au premier rang. **GOOGLE-TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH: I took the time to watch the Courtillot conference at the IPGP on the 10th of January      available online on the IPGP website: [2] http://www.ipgp.jussieu.fr/, click      on news, seminars, videos, January 10)      Many things to complain about, but it would be too long (especially about      spin of translation + scaling for solar irradiance). About the      Curve they called Tglobe, Courtillot says very distinctly:      File "Paper I" file at 23 min and 40 sec.: "This curve is from Mr. Jones.      It is in his 1999 article in Reviews of Geophysics. "      File "Conclusions" at 7 min. and 30 sec.: "It is they who were wrong.      When we made this curve, five years ago in the article in Reviews of Geophysics,      of course, Jones's caption and his data were true. These      are his data, but his caption is wrong.      Anyone who examines this famous paper by Jones et al. (1999, Rev. Geophys.) can      see that these two assertions are totally FALSE. Note that the President of the      CNRS is sitting in the front row. ***************************************************************** Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:23:55 +0100 To: Phil Jones From: Edouard BARD Subject: additional file (attached PDF) X-Attachments: :Macintosh HD:1254945:Pierrehumbert/Pasotti.pdf: Phil, In complement to my email of last week (pasted below), I attach the Comment submitted by Ray to Science. Cheers, Edouard ***************************************** Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:19:42 +0100 To: Phil Jones From: Edouard BARD Subject: French daggers (+ 3 attached files) X-Attachments: :Macintosh HD:1254945:VC-DroitReponse - Acad.doc: :Macintosh HD:1254945:Acad01-08-SH.ppt: :Macintosh HD:929141:LeMonde16/1/08.pdf: Hello Phil, Ray sent a formal letter to Science. This is submitted for publication in the paper version of Science. Given the size limit (300 words) he couldn't give many details about the temperature data. An additional possibility for commenting is through what they call an e-letter that goes quicker. Note that during the 'Secret Committee' last Tuesday at the Academy, Courtillot and Allègre ferociously accused me for organizing a plot against their institute IPGP. As I told you, nobody was there to defend my case. Note also that Courtillot makes direct and vicious attacks against you: This started in the official 'Lettre de l'Académie' in which he wrote a long interview following the meetings in March 2007. I think you have this document already. You can download it again from: [3]http://www.academie-sciences.fr/publications/lettre.htm On page 3, Courtillot accuses you for hiding the temperature data and express his doubts about your computations. On page 25, Courtillot writes: "Je suis en discussion depuis nos journées avec le professeur Jones, un échange amical et régulier pour essayer de voir si nous pouvons reprendre et comparer nos données aux leurs. Pour l'instant cela semble difficile, ce laboratoire ayant signé un accord de confidentialité avec les fournisseurs de données brutes ! Reconstituer cette base de données avec un accès aux données de l'ensemble des stations météorologiques du monde est un travail considérable, puisque le professeur Jones a dans sa base de données 3,7 millions de températures mensuelles depuis 1850. Or nous avons des doutes croissants sur la validité d'un calcul que pour l'instant nous n'avons pas tous les éléments pour reprendre." ** GOOGLE-TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH: "I've been in discussion since our days with Professor Jones, a friendly and regular exchange to try to see if we can resume and compare our data to theirs. For now it seems difficult, as that laboratory has signed a confidentiality agreement with raw data providers! Reconstituting this database with access to data from all the world's weather stations is a lot of work, since Professor Jones has in his database 3.7 million monthly temperatures since 1850. But we have growing doubts about the validity of a calculation that for the moment we do not have all the elements to reproduce." Last Tuesday, during the 'Secret Committee' at the Academy, Courtillot reiterated his doubts and distributed to all academicians a text (attached Word file) and made a powerpoint presentation (attached PPT file). This documents also includes the editorial note that will be published by Rob van der Hilst in the next EPSL issue in order to print my note added in proof and to clarify the data sources. Part of Courtillot's text is already published in Le Monde (+ edits) and will be published in other major French newspapers. On pages 5, 6 8, and in Le Monde Courtillot writes: "Sans trop rentrer dans les détails techniques, il nous a été reproché d'avoir utilisé des données dont les références n'étaient pas ce que nous disions. Notamment une série de données que nous attribuions à un chercheur britannique, M. Jones, n'était pas reconnue par ce chercheur comme provenant de lui. Nous avons établi que ce chercheur faisait erreur et que les données étaient bien les siennes et que nous n'avions en rien altéré ses données. Nous les attribuions en revanche par erreur à tout un hémisphère de la terre alors qu'elles étaient en fait réduites à la zone de latitudes allant de 20°N au pôle. Cette confusion résulte principalement d'un manque de clarté des légendes des articles de Jones et de ses co-auteurs eux-mêmes, mais surtout, et c'est le plus important pour le débat scientifique, elle est sans conséquences sur nos conclusions, les diverses séries de données concernées étant peu différentes, comme il est aisé de le vérifier. Dans la note évoquée par S. Huet, Bard et Delaygue nous ont accusés de fausse citation, en arguant du témoignage (erroné) de Jones." ** GOOGLE-TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH: "Without going into too much technical detail, we were criticized for using data whose references were not what we said. In particular, a series of data that we attributed to a British researcher, Mr. Jones, was not recognized by this researcher as coming from him. We determined that this researcher was mistaken and that the data were his own and that we had not tampered with his data. On the other hand, we mistakenly assigned them to a whole hemisphere of the earth, whereas in fact they were reduced to the zone of latitudes ranging from 20°N to the pole. This confusion results mainly from a lack of clarity in the captions in Jones' and his co-authors' articles themselves, but most importantly, and this is most important for the scientific debate, it has no impact on our conclusions, as the various data sets involved are not very different, as it is easy to verify. In the note mentioned by S. Huet, Bard and Delaygue accused us of false quotation, arguing Jones's (erroneous) testimony." Note that Courtillot makes as if the file he used is taken directly from Jones et al. (1999) as cited in his paper, instead of explaining that it is a different curve, constructed for a very specific purpose in Briffa et al. (2001) of which you are coauthor. What is amazing is that Courtillot claims that the only confusion is between a record for latitude >20°N instead of the northern hemisphere. This is crazy because the confusion is between the global curve and a curve not only for latitudes >20°N BUT also only for continents and during the April-September warm season. Looking again at Figure 2 page 178 of Jones et al. (1999), it don't see any "lack of clarity" in your three-panel figure! It is even obvious that the Tglobe curve he used is similar to the northern Hemispheric one instead of the global one. This was actually the reason of my initial doubt expressed in the submitted version of my EPSL Comment. In addition, I don't see why the statement form you I used in my note added in proof would be erroneous: "We were unable to find this file even by contacting its putative author who specifically stated to us that it is not one of his files (Dr. Philip D. Jones, written communication dated Oct. 23, 2007)." This statement is completely true. This is indeed not one of your UEA file. Second, the first part of the URL is incomplete and incorrect (dots are missing). We now know that this file DOES exist at NOAA BUT that it is NOT what has been plotted by Courtillot et al.: [4]http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/anomalies.html [5]ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.land.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat Hence, if I had not submitted my note added in proof, the readers would be unable to locate the file and would believe that it is a (land) global temperature file. In any case the file was not the one plotted on their Figure now replotted in Science ! Best wishes, Edouard -- ---------------------------------------------- Edouard BARD Professeur au Collège de France Chaire de l'évolution du climat et de l'océan Directeur adjoint du CEREGE, UMR-6635 Le Trocadéro, Europole de l'Arbois BP80 13545 Aix-en-Provence cdx 4 Tel 04 42 50 74 18, 04 42 50 74 20 (secr.) Fax 04 42 50 74 21, email bard@cerege.fr [6]http://www.college-de-france.fr/default/EN/all/evo_cli/ ---------------------------------------------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------