Image:MBH98 SEW drawing311.png

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MBH 1998 Global Warming Graph

Northern Hemisphere temperature variations.

Graph of global warming pattern based upon several proxy sources.

Image created by Scot Wilcoxon, 2003, released under

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[edit] Image is ambiguous

This graph is utterly useless. Global warming is not simply a vague feeling. It's science.

There is no statement as to what variable is being plotted (the reader can guess it might be average world temperature relative to some zero point, but without any definition of world temperature or link to a wikipedia page, even this would be close to useless).
The horizontal axis has neither a label nor any units - (the reader can guess it might be years during the 20th century, but it's unacceptable to make the reader guess like this)
Although some numbers exist on the vertical scale, they are barely legible, we don't know what they signify nor in what units they are presented.
anonymous proxy sources are a pretty poor reference. This is the wikipedia, not a poetry contest.

Sorry to sound so negative. i'm sure with a bit of work you could make a graph which has at least some scientific meaning, and put in some references so that people can check themselves. Boud 15:48, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

OK, i guess your graph is somehow related to Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years, but you really should redo it with proper axis labels (numbers, units, understandable name of variable, understandable title) - remember that people might link to the image from pages where this information is not stated.

The graph at http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig2-20.htm is very dramatic, but it's also clearly labelled. i realise we have to have something GFDL - let's remember that the data on any published graph like this is public domain, it's only the particular style of plotting etc which can be copyrighted. i might help if you can't do this. Boud 16:05, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Stay Tuned

I know the image is not very good. It was meant as an illustration, to show the temperature pattern under discussion (low and flat with an upward zoom). I am working on better images with more detail. This was meant to be "picture of cow in pasture" not "dissection of cow anatomy". Dissection is ongoing in several articles.
The tools used for this version did not create usable axis labels.
Being from proxy sources are all that is definitely known. My image is from data for Mann et al 1998 graph thus comes from whatever sources were used there. The original data used in the study seems to not be available.
I did not link to pages with more detail, as text already in articles already has details. You're right, less complete pages might link here. There will be more text here soon.
I know images themselves are copyrighted, which is why I created a new image instead of using existing ones. One hundred photographers side by side during a Yosemite sunset...each have their own copyright protection.

SEWilco 14:00, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

[edit] new version

Since i complained, i decided i might as well do the work.

How do you like this:

The error bars are much smaller than on the original, simply because i used the 50year and 10year averages - the uncertainty goes down by the square root of the number of independent data points added up - there should be an entry for Poisson statistics or something similar here on wikipedia...

Please tell me if you think anything should be improved before replacing your figure by this one. i can email or post the fortran code (requires pgplot which is open-source and free as in beer, though non-free as in non-GPL) somewhere if someone knows the appropriate place (posting it is as text is rather error-prone, since fortran is sensitive to column placement of command).

BTW, have you seen this? http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1118244,00.html

It's just going to be so much We told you so over the next 50 years :((. Boud 22:45, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

i just found this page by Mann + Jones: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann2003b/mann2003b.html and they have their data in a simple ascii table: ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/contributions_by_author/mann2003b/mann2003b.txt so that making a GFDL figure should be easy if someone wants to. Boud 23:37, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)