In November 2009, shortly before the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, a server of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, UK was hacked and thousands of emails were released on the Internet. Some of these emails were cherry-picked by the climate change denier community to challenge the integrity of the CRU data and the reliability of the global temperature trend. Since the global temperature dataset maintained by the CRU^[1] is a widely used dataset in the climate science community in assessing the long-term temperature variation of the Earth, speculations and commentaries trying to disprove global warming were quickly spread all over the world via the Internet and snowballed by the enthusiastic media. This incident was labelled as the "Climategate"^[2].

Investigations on this incident were later conducted by several independent bodies or committees. All investigation reports found that there is no evidence of fraud or misconduct in the work of CRU^[3-6]. Disappointingly, the important findings of these vindicating reports did not receive much attention by the media. Also, the basic media coverage to repudiate the previous wrong allegations was disproportionally less than that for the outbreak of the event^[7]. As a result, the "Climategate" is still sometimes wrongly quoted as a conspiracy in climate science in the blogosphere and some news columns.

Apart from the CRU dataset, the NOAA^[a] dataset and the NASA GISS^[b] dataset are frequently used to assess the global temperature trend^[8]. Recently, a group of scientists, including Saul Perlmutter, the winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, published on the Internet the results of an independent study entitled "Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature"^[9], aiming to resolve criticism of temperature analyses raised by climate change skeptics. The scientists analyzed 1.6 billion temperature data records from 39000 stations, more than five times of stations considered in previous climate studies. What they found about the long-term trend of average world land temperature was that there was a rise of approximately 1^oC since the mid-1950s, in good agreement with the previous findings of NOAA, NASA and Hadley Centre/CRU^[c] (Figure 1). The recent findings of the Berkeley study reaffirm the reality of global warming.



S M Lee and T C Lee


Notes:

[a] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

[b] Goddard Institute for Space Studies, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

[c] Hadley Centre is part of UK Met Office and UK's foremost climate change research centre. It works jointly with CRU to compile the global temperature dataset.

Figure 1      Anomalies of 10-year moving average of land surface temperature, relative to
the Jan 1950 - December 1979 mean. The grey band indicates uncertainty
interval. Source: Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project.

In the recent public opinion survey^[1], members of the public gave higher marks on the accuracy of the Observatory's weather forecasts relative to the past several years. Besides the day-to-day weather forecasts, we also provide longer-range forecasts which predict the average temperature and rainfall for the next season. In view of some recent news reports about the possibility of early bloom of flowers intended for the Chinese New Year celebration, with suggestions that temperatures were warmer than those forecast by the Observatory, we would like to say a few words on how good (or bad) these forecasts really were.

In early September 2011, the seasonal forecast issued by the Observatory predicted that the average temperature for autumn 2011 (September - November 2011) would likely be normal to above normal. The actual average temperature for these three months was 25.3 ^oC, which was 0.5 ^oC above the normal of the same period, validating the forecast.

In the last few months of 2011, below-normal sea surface temperatures of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific were observed. Climate models around the world predicted that the situation would likely develop into a La Niña event in early 2012. Past statistics show that the northeast monsoon over southern China is usually stronger during La Niña. Hong Kong's winter (December-February) temperature is likely to be normal or below normal when La Niña is in place ^[2-3]. Furthermore, the majority of climate models around the world also predicted stronger-than-normal northeast monsoon over southern China for this winter. Based on the La Niña consideration and model predictions, our seasonal forecast for winter 2011/2012 (i.e. December 2011 - February 2012) predicted normal to below-normal temperatures.

Winter (December-February) average temperature of Hong Kong
during La Niña in recent decades

In my last blog, I quoted Steve Jobs' iPhone as an example to talk about multitasking. Unexpectedly he passed away only a week later, leaving many people grief-stricken. This again reminds us that life is full of uncertainties, and life is short.

After the death of Steve Jobs, a video ^[1] of his speech made at the Stanford University in 2005 became very popular on the web. I think many of us have already watched it. His speech made reference to three stories from his own life to encourage the young graduates. The first story talked about him dropping out from the compulsory courses shortly after he entered college; instead he went to the classes which interested him, including calligraphy. As a result, he could later apply his learning to introduce beautiful typography to the world of personal computers. His second story talked about him being fired from Apple Computer when he was very successful in his career nine years after he founded the company. He felt devastated for some time, but he could start over and subsequently established NeXT Computer and the very successful Pixar Animation Studios. Later NeXT was taken over by Apple, enabling him to go back to Apple and reached a new height in his career. His last story was about him being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a year before his speech. He was able to turn the threat of death into a positive driving force to encourage himself and everyone to make the best use of the limited life, not to be trapped by dogma, and to strive towards what we truly want to achieve.

Within only a space of two years, Steve Jobs completed the development and launched the epoch-making iPhone, bringing him to the summit of his career. His success story lends credence to the philosophies of his speech: pursuing the study and career that we love, the ability to withstand setbacks and start over again, and striving towards our goal. These philosophies are indeed the keys of his success, and merit our reflection and adoption.

The philosophies of Steve Jobs remind me about the book "Mindset" ^[2] , authored by renowned psychologist Carol Dweck, that I read a few years ago. Based on her many-year studies, she reckoned that the success or not of a person depends on his/her mindset: if one possesses a growth mindset, believing that one's own efforts could bring personal improvements, that perseverance could overcome difficulties, and that failures could be viewed as challenges - this kind of person would be able to learn from failure and finally succeed. On the contrary, if one possesses a fixed mindset, believing that one's own qualities (talented or mediocre) are fixed traits, that success would only depend on whether one is born with talent, and that personal efforts would be futile - this kind of person would tend to be conservative and would not take up challenges in order to avoid failure. As a result, he/she is not able to learn from failure, develop and grow.

The theory of Carol Dweck is rather similar to the motto of one of my friends: "It is best if we experience setback at some stage in our life, as this would make us even stronger, more mature, and more capable to stand up to challenges."This would initially sound difficult to appreciate - who would like setback? Recalling when I was 14 years old, I started to suffer from eye diseases (retinal detachment, with central vision and reading ability frequently impaired due to internal hemorrhage of the eyes). As a result, I could not attend physical education classes. Studying and reading were very much affected and became a strenuous task. At times, I would rather put aside the study and go on hiking. Not only could I adjust my mood and positively tackle the difficulties, I could also enjoy the fresh air and do some degree of physical exercise. Later I gradually cultivated this healthy habit of hiking and it turned out that my results at the secondary school open examinations and at the university were not bad. I think this sharing may be an example of growth amid setback!

As the start of a new year, I wish for everyone to have a growth mindset, and to always strive for improvement and excellence!



CM Shun

Steve Jobs delivering his commencement speech at the Stanford University in 2005 ^[1]