cc: "'Tim Lenton'" , date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 15:13:33 -0000 from: "Andrew Watson" subject: Re: re; IPCC and RAE to: "Jacquie Burgess" , I'd agree probably 10 years away to go from weather forecasting to ~ annual scale. But the "big climate picture" includes ocean feedbacks on all time scales, carbon and other elemental cycles, etc. and it has to be several decades before that is sorted out I would think. So I would guess that it will not be models or theory, but observation that will provide the answer to the question of how the climate will change in many decades time. Cheers Andy ----- Original Message ----- From: [1]Jacquie Burgess To: [2]p.jones@uea.ac.uk Cc: [3]'Andrew Watson' ; [4]'Tim Lenton' ; [5]c.lequere@uea.ac.uk Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 11:23 AM Subject: re; IPCC and RAE Dear Phil, Andy, Tim and Corinne, I came across the following comment in New Scientist Editorial this week - you probably saw it (?). A quote from Kevin Trenberth (US NCAR) saying we want seamless predictions that can go from weather forecasts, through predicting the ocean processes behind variables like El Nino and Atlantic hurricanes, right up to the big climate picture. Just a query - how close would we be to being able to deliver that? Jacquie Jacquie Burgess Centre for Environmental Risk School of Environmental Sciences UEA , Norwich NR4 7TJ tel: (0)1603 593129 fax: (0)1603 593739 [6]www.uea.ac.uk/env/cer