Hans von Storch (born 13 August 1949) is a German
climate
Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologic ...
scientist. He is a professor at the Meteorological Institute of the
University of Hamburg
The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vor ...
, and (since 2001) Director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz Research Centre (previously: GKSS Research Center) in
Geesthacht
Geesthacht () is the largest city in the District of the Duchy of Lauenburg (Herzogtum Lauenburg) in Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany, south-east of Hamburg on the right bank of the River Elbe.
History
A church was built in what is today ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. He is a member of the advisory boards of the journals ''
Journal of Climate
The ''Journal of Climate'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal published semi-monthly by the American Meteorological Society. It covers research that advances basic understanding of the dynamics and physics of the climate system on larg ...
'' and ''
Annals of Geophysics''. He worked at the
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (''Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie''; MPI-M) is an internationally renowned institute for climate research. Its mission is to understand Earth's changing climate. Founded in 1975, it is affiliated w ...
from 1986 to 1995 and headed the Statistical Analysis and Modelling research group there.
Opinion on global warming
Storch said in testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006 that anthropogenic climate change 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'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
'' he co-wrote with
Nico Stehr
Nico Stehr (born 19 March 1942) was "Karl Mannheim Professor for Cultural Studies" at the Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen / Germany and Founding Director of thEuropean Center for Sustainability Research
Biography
Stehr received a PhD in s ...
, 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 science and criticized some publicly visible scientists for simplifying and dramatizing their communications. He pointed to the German ''Waldsterben'' (
Forest dieback
Forest dieback (also "", a German loan word) is a condition in trees or woody plants in which peripheral parts are killed, either by pathogens, parasites or conditions like acid rain, drought, and more. These episodes can have disastrous conse ...
) 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.
On 20 June 2013 Storch stated "So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. We're facing a puzzle. Recent emissions have actually risen even more steeply than we feared. As a result, according to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years. That hasn't happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) -- a value very close to zero. This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year."
[Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufetter (20 June 2013)]
"Climate Expert von Storch: Why Is Global Warming Stagnating?"
Der Spiegel
''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
. Retrieved 26 June 2013.
Climategate controversy
Hans von Storch, 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, with effect from 1 August, Hans von Storch was appointed as editor-in-chief of the journal ''
Climate Research
Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , '' -logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of stu ...
'', after having been on its editorial board since 1994. A few months before a controversial article (
Soon and
Baliunas 2003) had raised questions about the journal's decentralised review process, with no editor-in-chief, and about the editorial policy of one editor,
Chris de Freitas
Christopher Rhodes de Freitas (1948 – 5 July 2017) was a New Zealand climate scientist. He was an associate professor in the School of Environment at the University of Auckland.
Education and professional career
De Freitas, born in Trinidad, ...
. Storch drafted and circulated an editorial on the new regime, reserving the right as editor-in-chief to reject articles proposed for acceptance by one of the editors. Following the publisher's refusal to publish the editorial unless all editors serving on the board endorsed the new policy, Storch resigned four days before he was due to take up his new position. Four other editors later left the journal. Storch later told the ''
Chronicle of Higher Education
''The Chronicle of Higher Education'' is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty and student affairs professionals (staff members and administrators). A subscription is required to rea ...
'' 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, Storch's team published an article in the journal ''
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
'' which tested multiproxy methods such as those used by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes, 1998, often called MBH98, or Mann and
Jones
Jones may refer to:
People
*Jones (surname), a common Welsh and English surname
*List of people with surname Jones
* Jones (singer), a British singer-songwriter
Arts and entertainment
* Jones (''Animal Farm''), a human character in George Orwell ...
, to obtain the global
temperature variations in the past 1000 years. The test suggested that the method used in MBH98 would inherently underestimate large variations had they occurred; but this was subsequently challenged: see
hockey stick graph for more detail.
To reach this conclusion, 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
Principal component analysis (PCA) is a popular technique for analyzing large datasets containing a high number of dimensions/features per observation, increasing the interpretability of data while preserving the maximum amount of information, and ...
, 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.
In 2010, Storch received the IMSC achievement award at the
International Meetings on Statistical Climatology in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
, 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 Duck
Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is known fo ...
against accusations of indecent behavior. Between 1976 and 1985 he was publisher of a magazine on Donald Duck, ''Der Hamburger Donaldist''.
References
Selected publications
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External links
Hans von Storch's climate web page(with Biography, links to publications, etc.)
His blog Klimazwiebel (the climate onion)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Storch, Hans Von
1949 births
Living people
People from Wyk auf Föhr
German meteorologists
German climatologists
Academic staff of the University of Hamburg
Environmental scientists
German bloggers
German male writers
Male bloggers
Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany