Climate Scientist Chris Landsea Quits IPCC.
In
his letter of resignation (see below) Landsea Blasts Politicized
'Preconceived Agendas' of IPCC.
[Landsea is one of the world's leading hurricane researchers, specializing in seasonal and climatic relationships of Atlantic tropical cyclones. He served as chair of the American Meteorological Society's (AMS) Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones for the years 2000-2002. He was recipient of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Climate and Global Change for the period 1995-1996.]
An
Open Letter to the Community from Chris Landsea.
Dear
Colleagues,
After
some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from
participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to
view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having
become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the
IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.
With
this open letter to the community, I wish to explain the basis for my
decision and bring awareness to what I view as a problem in the IPCC
process. The IPCC is a group of climate researchers from around the
world that every few years summarize how climate is changing and how it
may be altered in the future due to manmade global warming. I had served
both as an author for the Observations chapter and a Reviewer for the
2nd Assessment Report in 1995 and the 3rd Assessment Report in 2001,
primarily on the topic of tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons).
My work on hurricanes, and tropical cyclones more generally, has been
widely cited by the IPCC. For the upcoming AR4, I was asked several
weeks ago by the Observations chapter Lead Author Dr. Kevin Trenberth to
provide the writeup for Atlantic hurricanes. As I had in the past, I
agreed to assist the IPCC in what I thought was to be an important and
politically neutral determination of what is happening with our climate.
Shortly
after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane
section for the AR4's Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated
in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic
"Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more
outbreaks of intense hurricane activity" along with other media
interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was
widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic
hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming
occurring today.
Listening
to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media
interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately
quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being
misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to
result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent
hurricane activity much more severe.
I
found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press
conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting
hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in
that press conference had performed any research on hurricane
variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All
previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has
shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of
tropical cyclones, either in the
Moreover,
the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible
studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon
hurricanes will likely be quite small. The latest results from the
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of
Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have
winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been
proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what
may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and
Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).
It
is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an
unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global
warming. Given Dr. Trenberth's role as the IPCC's Lead Author
responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements
so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern
that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed
objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity. My
view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with
the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific
understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change
science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy.
My
concerns go beyond the actions of Dr. Trenberth and his colleagues to
how he and other IPCC officials responded to my concerns. I did caution
Dr. Trenberth before the media event and provided him a summary of the
current understanding within the hurricane research community. I was
disappointed when the IPCC leadership dismissed my concerns when I
brought up the misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the
authority of the IPCC.
Specifically,
the IPCC leadership said that Dr. Trenberth was speaking as an
individual even though he was introduced in the press conference as an
IPCC lead author; I was told that the media was exaggerating or
misrepresenting his words, even though the audio from the press
conference and interview tells a different story (available on the Web
directly); and that Dr. Trenberth was accurately reflecting conclusions
from the TAR, even though it is quite clear that the TAR stated that
there was no connection between global warming and hurricane activity.
The IPCC leadership saw nothing to be concerned with in Dr. Trenberth's
unfounded pronouncements to the media, despite his supposedly impartial
important role that he must undertake as a Lead Author on the upcoming
AR4.
It
is certainly true that "individual scientists can do what they wish
in their own rights," as one of the folks in the IPCC leadership
suggested. Differing conclusions and robust debates are certainly
crucial to progress in climate science. However, this case is not an
honest scientific discussion conducted at a meeting of climate
researchers. Instead, a scientist with an important role in the IPCC who
represented himself as a Lead Author for the IPCC [Dr. Trenberth] has
used that position to promulgate to the media and general public his own
opinion that the busy 2004 hurricane season was caused by global
warming, which is in direct opposition to research written in the field
and is counter to conclusions in the TAR.
This
becomes problematic when I am then asked to provide the draft about
observed hurricane activity variations for the AR4 with, ironically, Dr.
Trenberth as the Lead Author for this chapter. Because of Dr.
Trenberth's pronouncements, the IPCC process on our assessment of these
crucial extreme events in our climate system has been subverted and
compromised, its neutrality lost. While no one can "tell"
scientists what to say or not say (nor am I suggesting that), the IPCC
did select Dr. Trenberth as a Lead Author and entrusted to him to carry
out this duty in a non-biased, neutral point of view. When scientists
hold press conferences and speak with the media, much care is needed not
to reflect poorly upon the IPCC.
It
is of more than passing interest to note that Dr. Trenberth, while eager
to share his views on global warming and hurricanes with the media,
declined to do so at the Climate Variability and Change Conference in
January where he made several presentations. Perhaps he was concerned
that such speculation--though worthy in his mind of public
pronouncements--would not stand up to the scrutiny of fellow climate
scientists.
I
personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that
I view as both being motivated by preconceived agendas and being
scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr.
Trenberth's actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4,
I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4.
Sincerely,
Chris Landsea
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