Hans von Storch
Encyclopedia
Hans von Storch is a German
climate
scientist. He is Professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg
, and (since 2001) Director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz Research Centre (previously: GKSS Research Center) in Geesthacht
, Germany
. He is a member of the advisory boards of the journals Journal of Climate
and Annals of Geophysics.
He is also known for an article in Der Spiegel
he co-wrote with Nico Stehr
, which states that:
In December 2009, he expressed concern about the credibility of climate scientists and compared Global Warming alarmism to the German Waldsterben (Forest dieback
) hype of the 1980s:
In January 2011, Storch was counted among the 100 most influential Germans by the Focus magazine
for being a "climate realist".
, who also concurs with the mainstream view on global warming, said that the University of East Anglia (UEA) had "violated a fundamental principle of science" by refusing to share data with other researchers. "They play science as a power game," he said.
(having been on the editorial board since 1994), with effect from 1 August 2003, after a controversial article (Soon
and Baliunas
2003) had raised questions about the decentralised review process (with no editor-in-chief); and the editorial policy of one editor, Chris de Freitas
. Von Storch drafted and circulated an editorial on the new regime, reserving for himself the right to censor manuscripts accepted by the editors, but following the publisher's refusal to publish it unless all editors serving on the board endorsed the new policy, von Storch resigned four days before he was due to start his new position. Four other editors later followed. Von Storch later told the Chronicle of Higher Education that climate science skeptics “had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common.”
that tested multiproxy methods such as those used by Mann, Bradley and Hughes, 1998, often called MBH98, or Mann and Jones to obtain the global temperature variations in the past 1000 years
. The test showed that the method used in MBH98 would inherently underestimate large variations had they occurred; but has subsequently been challenged: see hockey stick controversy
for more detail.
To reach this conclusion, von Storch et al. used a climate model to generate a series of annual temperature maps for the world over the past several centuries. They then added white noise to the proxy data and applied the methods used in MBH98, a variation of principal component analysis, to the computed temperature maps and found that the amount of variation was considerably reduced.
In April 2006, Science published a comment, authored by Wahl and collaborators, asserting errors in the 2004 paper, stating that "their conclusion was based on incorrect implementation of the reconstruction procedure" a mistake with Repercussions; and a disputing VS Reply. In this reply, VS and his team demonstrated that caveats raised in the Wahl comment did not invalidate their original conclusion. The inadequacy of the MBH98 methodology for climate reconstructions was later independently confirmed in other publications, for instance by Lee, Zwiers and Tsao, 2008 or by Christiansen et al., 2009.
Von Storch received the IMSC achievement award at the International Meetings on Statistical Climatologyin Edinburgh
in 2010, to "recognize his key contributions to statistical downscaling, reconstruction of temperature series, analyses of climatic variability, and detection and attribution of climate change."
against the accusations of indecent behavior. Between 1976 and 1985 he was publisher of a magazine on Donald Duck, Der Hamburger Donaldist.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
climate
Climate
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
scientist. He is Professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg
University of Hamburg
The University of Hamburg is a university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by Wilhelm Stern and others. It grew out of the previous Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen and the Kolonialinstitut as well as the Akademisches Gymnasium. There are around 38,000 students as of the start of...
, and (since 2001) Director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz Research Centre (previously: GKSS Research Center) in Geesthacht
Geesthacht
Geesthacht is the largest city in the District of the Duchy of Lauenburg in Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany, 34 km southeast of Hamburg on the right bank of the river Elbe.-History:*Around 800: A church is documented....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. He is a member of the advisory boards of the journals Journal of Climate
Journal of Climate
The Journal of Climate is a scientific journal published by the American Meteorological Society.The journal publishes articles on climate research, in particular those concerned with large-scale atmospheric and oceanic variability, changes in the climate system , and climate simulation and...
and Annals of Geophysics.
Opinion on global warming
He said that global warming exists:- "Based on the scientific evidence, I am convinced that we are facing anthropogenic climate change brought about by the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."
He is also known for an article in Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
he co-wrote with Nico Stehr
Nico Stehr
Nico Stehr is "Karl Mannheim Professor for Cultural Studies" at the Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen / Germany and Founding Director of the ....
, which states that:
- "Scientific research faces a crisis because its public figures are overselling the issues to gain attention in a hotly contested market for newsworthy information."
- "The alarmists think that climate change is something extremely dangerous, extremely bad and that overselling a little bit, if it serves a good purpose, is not that bad."
In December 2009, he expressed concern about the credibility of climate scientists and compared Global Warming alarmism to the German Waldsterben (Forest dieback
Forest dieback
Forest dieback is a condition in trees or woody plants in which peripheral parts are killed, either by parasites or due to conditions like acid rain and drought....
) hype of the 1980s:
- Research about the forest die back in Germany may serve as an example at the other end of the spectrum. The science of forest damages was in the 1980s heavily politicized, and used as support for a specific preconceived "good" policy of environmental protection. The resulting overselling and dramatization broke down in the 1990s, and news about adverse developments in German forests is now a hard sell in Germany. An observer wrote in 2004: "The damage for the scientists is enormous. Nobody believes them any longer." Of course, the damage was not only limited to the forest researchers, but also to other environmental scientists and politicians as well.
In January 2011, Storch was counted among the 100 most influential Germans by the Focus magazine
Focus (German magazine)
Focus is a German weekly news magazine published in Munich and distributed throughout Germany. It is the third-largest weekly news magazine in Germany. It is considered conservative and leaned towards economic liberalism.- Overview :...
for being a "climate realist".
Climategate Controversy
Hans von StorchHans von Storch
Hans von Storch is a German climate scientist. He is Professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg, and Director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany...
, who also concurs with the mainstream view on global warming, said that the University of East Anglia (UEA) had "violated a fundamental principle of science" by refusing to share data with other researchers. "They play science as a power game," he said.
Climate Research controversy
In 2003 von Storch was appointed as editor-in-chief of the journal Climate ResearchClimate Research (journal)
Climate Research is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Inter-Research Science Center that was established in 1990. Its founder was Otto Kinne. Three volumes are published each year...
(having been on the editorial board since 1994), with effect from 1 August 2003, after a controversial article (Soon
Willie Soon
Willie Wei-Hock Soon is an astrophysicist at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Soon has testified before Congress on the issue of climate change He is known for his views that most global warming is caused by solar variation...
and Baliunas
Sallie Baliunas
Sallie Baliunas is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division and formerly Deputy Director of the Mount Wilson Observatory. She serves as Senior Scientist at the George C. Marshall Institute in Washington, DC, and...
2003) had raised questions about the decentralised review process (with no editor-in-chief); and the editorial policy of one editor, Chris de Freitas
Chris de Freitas
Chris de Freitas is an Associate Professor in the School of Environment at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.-Education and professional career:...
. Von Storch drafted and circulated an editorial on the new regime, reserving for himself the right to censor manuscripts accepted by the editors, but following the publisher's refusal to publish it unless all editors serving on the board endorsed the new policy, von Storch resigned four days before he was due to start his new position. Four other editors later followed. Von Storch later told the Chronicle of Higher Education that climate science skeptics “had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common.”
Publications and awards
In late 2004 his team published an article in ScienceScience (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
that tested multiproxy methods such as those used by Mann, Bradley and Hughes, 1998, often called MBH98, or Mann and Jones to obtain the global temperature variations in the past 1000 years
Temperature record of the past 1000 years
The temperature record of the 2nd millennium describes the reconstruction of temperatures since 1000 CE on the Northern Hemisphere, later extended back to 1 CE and also to cover the southern hemisphere. A reconstruction is needed because a reliable surface temperature record exists only since about...
. The test showed that the method used in MBH98 would inherently underestimate large variations had they occurred; but has subsequently been challenged: see hockey stick controversy
Hockey stick controversy
The hockey stick controversy refers to debates over the technical correctness and implications for global warming of graphs showing reconstructed estimates of the temperature record of the past 1000 years...
for more detail.
To reach this conclusion, von Storch et al. used a climate model to generate a series of annual temperature maps for the world over the past several centuries. They then added white noise to the proxy data and applied the methods used in MBH98, a variation of principal component analysis, to the computed temperature maps and found that the amount of variation was considerably reduced.
In April 2006, Science published a comment, authored by Wahl and collaborators, asserting errors in the 2004 paper, stating that "their conclusion was based on incorrect implementation of the reconstruction procedure" a mistake with Repercussions; and a disputing VS Reply. In this reply, VS and his team demonstrated that caveats raised in the Wahl comment did not invalidate their original conclusion. The inadequacy of the MBH98 methodology for climate reconstructions was later independently confirmed in other publications, for instance by Lee, Zwiers and Tsao, 2008 or by Christiansen et al., 2009.
Von Storch received the IMSC achievement award at the International Meetings on Statistical Climatologyin Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
in 2010, to "recognize his key contributions to statistical downscaling, reconstruction of temperature series, analyses of climatic variability, and detection and attribution of climate change."
Donald Duck
In 1977, Hans von Storch co-founded a 100-member Donald Duck Club, defending Donald DuckDonald Duck
Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created in 1934 at Walt Disney Productions and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor suit with a cap and a black or red bow tie. Donald is most...
against the accusations of indecent behavior. Between 1976 and 1985 he was publisher of a magazine on Donald Duck, Der Hamburger Donaldist.
External links
- von Storch's web page at the Helmholtz Center (with Biography, links to publications, etc.)
- His blog