A few days ago, WUWT pointed out that the American Meteorological Society webpage showed that the Gergis et al paper had been officially “withdrawn”. However, readers should know better than to presume that this would have any effect on IPCC use of the reconstruction.

The withdrawal of the Gergis article hasn’t had the slightest impact on IPCC usage of the Gergis reconstruction, which continues to be used in the recently released AR5 Second Order Draft, thanks to academic check kiting reminiscent of Ammann and Wahl. Tim Osborn of CRU is a Lead Author of the AR5 chapter (as he was in AR4) and would be familiar with the technique from AR4.

Although David Karoly had denied that Gergis et al had been withdrawn, the AMS finally admitted this at their website here.

However, the Gergis reconstruction continues to be used in the IPCC Second Order Draft (released for review in early October). The figure below shows its use in the First Order Draft on the left and its use in the Second Order Draft on the right – the two reconstructions are identical up to smoothing.

However, the attribution has changed. The First Order Draft attributed the reconstruction to Gergis et al (then submitted to Journal of Climate, later accepted and then withdrawn. See CA posts here). The Second Order Draft attributes the Gergis reconstruction to PAGES 2K Consortium (submitted to Science).

I presume that the PAGES 2K Consortium has done a little academic check kiting a la Wahl and Ammann i.e. that they have cited the Gergis et al reconstruction even though the article has been withdrawn. The IPCC then cited the article that kited the check (a kitation? :))

It would be interesting to see precisely how the PAGES 2K Consortium (of which Gergis was a member) stickhandled their citation of the withdrawn Gergis et al article. I doubt that they were entirely candid with Sciencemag on the matter.

The PAGES 2K consortium article should be online to Second Order Draft reviewers at the WG1 website, but I haven’t seen it because I haven’t signed up as a reviewer since I am not prepared to agree to the secrecy demands instituted by Thomas Stocker at Phil Jones’ urging. But for any IPCC reviewers reading this post, take a look. See if this most recent check-kiting makes you proud to be part of the organization.



