Hans von Storch

Hans von Storch [1] is a German climate scientist. In late 2004 his team published an article in Science [H. von Storch, E. Zorita, J.M. Jones, Y. Dimitriev, F. González-Rouco, and S.F.B. Tett Science 22 October 2004; 306: 679-682 online September 30] that tested multiproxy methods such as those used by Mann, Bradley and Hughes, 1998, often called MBH98, [2] or Mann and Jones [3] to obtain the global temperature variations in the past 1000 years. The test showed that the method used in MBH98 would inherently underestimate large variations had they occurred.

To reach this conclusion, v. Storch et al. used an advanced climate model to generate a series of annual temperature maps for the world over the past several centuries. They then applied the methods used in MBH98, a variation of principal component analysis, to the computed temperature maps and found that the amount of variation was considerably reduced.

Acceptance of v. Storch, et al, is a validation of climate modeling, as the data set used to test the multiproxy methods is a state of the art climate model, which used best estimates of historical forcing. This model also predicts global warming for increases of greenhouse gas mixing ratios. In fact, v. Storch et al. comment that the sensitivity of climate to increases in greenhouse gases for their model is much higher than that gleaned from MBH98.

In 1978, Hans von Storch founded a 100-member Donald Duck Club, defending Donald Duck against the accusations of immoral behavior.