Myles Allen recently asked that more attention be paid by critics to work on climate sensitivity, rather than paleoclimate. Nic Lewis, a coauthor of O’Donnell et al 2010, has been parsing climate sensitivity calculations for some time and with considerable frustration. Nic Lewis has a very important article at Judy Curry’s here.

One of the seminal sensitivity estimates is Forest et al 2006. Nic reports that he tried for over a year to get data for this study with Forest finally saying that the raw data was now “lost”.

I have been trying for over a year, without success, to obtain from Dr Forest the data used in Forest 2006…. Unfortunately, Dr Forest reports that the raw model data is now lost.

Nic was able to to get data for two predecessor studies and has concluded that the calculations in Forest et al 2006 were done erroneously:

If I am right, then correct processing of the data used in Forest 2006 would lead to the conclusion that equilibrium climate sensitivity (to a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere) is close to 1°C, not 3°C, implying that likely future warming has been grossly overestimated by the IPCC.

This is important stuff. Nic is very sharp, Forest et al is an important paper and Nic’s conclusions are damning. It’s frustrating that, after all the controversy, climate journals don’t require authors to archive data and that IPCC authors continue to “lose” data.



