date: Mon Jan 19 11:34:01 2004 from: Tim Osborn subject: Re: J. Climate reviews to: "Michael E. Mann" , Scott Rutherford , Bradley Raymond , Hughes Malcolm , Jones Phil , Briffa Keith , mann@virginia.edu Hi Scott and Mike, thanks for forwarding the reviews - and thanks, Mike, for proposing that you and Scott take the first stab at revising/responding. In the meantime, here are some (random) comments: (1) Do not cite S&B03. Justify this to the editor by citing the exchange in EOS - especially the second EOF piece, which I believe is more damming to them than the first! (2) For M&M03 it's a little harder, since their work relates directly to the MBH data set used here, and because a response is not yet in the peer-reviewed literature. If your response is accepted by Climatic Change before the Rutherford et al. paper is revised, that will help. Yet, as I understand it, the point you make in your response is not that the data "problems" pointed out by M&M03 are *all* incorrect/misleading (though some/many may be), but that the NH temperature results are *unaffected* by them, even if a few are indeed in error. If so, might we need to correct the few errors that M&M03 did find, state that we have been done this in the paper, and then show the revised RegEM results (presumably almost as they are now?). Please correct me if I'm wrong about M&M03, or if the work/time involved in re-running RegEM with very slightly revised multi-proxy input is prohibitive. (3) As Mike says, the 2nd review still needs to be dealt with, despite being rather unfocussed. I would say that (in response to the final paragraph of reviewer B) that a detailed paper *is* necessary that dots the 'i's and crosses the 't's - not to re-inforce the conventional wisdom but to demonstrate that the "conventional wisdom" is relatively insensitive to methodological choices. By the way, the Pauling et al. paper is from Andreas Pauling and others at Heinz Wanner's group rather than Hamburg. The Pauling et al. paper does look at seasonality, but contributes little to the issue in my opinion. Nevertheless, we might cite it anyway, as a concession to the reviewer - while avoiding some of their other requests. I'll probably send more comments after I've talked with Keith and Phil (Phil is away at present). Cheers Tim At 20:07 16/01/2004, Michael E. Mann wrote: Dear All, The first review is insightful and helpful, the 2nd review provides relatively little insight. It promotes a number of myths, and plays gratuitous homage to the work of the Hamburg group (a hint as to where the reviewer might be from!). However, where reasonable points are raised by this reviewer, too they should be dealt with too. I don't think the paper can be split up, but it can probably be shortened a bit. I propose Scott and I take the first stab at revising and responding to reviewer comments, and then send it on to the others. Scott and I had discussed plan to make the matlab codes and data used available in a website mentioned in the paper, to avoid any possible criticisms of availability. Is there any problem in posting the version of the MXD data set used publiclly (Tim, Keith?), and any other thoughts on this? Please feel free to send any comments, while Scott and I begin to work on the revised version... Thanks, mike I At 02:25 PM 1/16/2004 -0500, Scott Rutherford wrote: Dear All, Attached are the reviews from the Journal of Climate manuscript. One generally good, one generally weird. Scott ______________________________________________ Scott Rutherford Assistant Professor Dept. of Natural Sciences Roger Williams University e-mail: srutherford@rwu.edu phone: (401) 254-3208 snail mail: One Ferry Road Bristol, RI 02809 ______________________________________________________________ Professor Michael E. Mann Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22903 _______________________________________________________________________ e-mail: mann@virginia.edu Phone: (434) 924-7770 FAX: (434) 982-2137 [1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml