date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 15:18:28 -0700 from: Tom Wigley subject: reply to several to: Sarah Raper , Sarah Raper Sarah, I have just got back from a very interesting meeting in Japan on stabilization -- from the IA modelling and economists viewpoint. The only climate science people there were me, Michael Schlesinger and Haroon Kheshgi. The rest were people like Naki, Jae Edmonds, Richels, Tom Kram, John Weyant, etc -- and a lot of Japanese who were mainly part of Morita's AIM team. Many people gave eulogies for Morita -- he was much admired and respected. Listening to what the AI groups have been doing recently makes me cringe at what the Tyndall Ctr is trying to do, and realize just how far they are out of it. Many people spontaneously criticized Schellnhuber -- he is apparently a bit of a laughing stock among these people. I am glad to hear that you have the extra time in Germany -- must be a load off your mind. Thanks for the Stocker item. I cannot believe that they could be so ignorant! I am not sure I understand what you say about sensitivity. It is clear that in general it cannot be a constant. It the baseline clouds change significantly or if sea ice changes a lot (etc) then the cloud, ice, etc. feedbacks must change. For most of the scenarios we consider, however, these changes are relatively small, so assuming a constant sensitivity is a reasonable approximation. I realize that there are some cases where one cannot fit the constant sensitivity UD EBM to AOGCM results, but I do not think we yet understand why this is so -- in terms of partitioning causes between UD EBM inadequacies and real AOGCM sensitivity changes. I do not think this is anything to worry about. Re the AR4, NCAR put my name down as a possible LA or contributing author for the projection and detection chapters. For the former, I wanted to make sure that MAGICC *is* used as the primary simple model. For the latter, I was afraid that Hadley people might otherwise have too dominant a role. I did not volunteer for any CLA jobs. Even if selected, I figure I can always say 'no' when the time comes. I do not know anything about the sensitivity meeting you mentioned, other than that Myles Allen also asked me if I was going. I do plan to go to his detection meeting in Oxford on April 15,16. I believe the sensitivity meeting is after this -- but I have a lecture to give in Dallas on April 20 which may well clash. Schlesinger gave a very good talk about sensitivity in Japan -- but I still disagree with the pdf he has backed out of the observational record. I cannot get his results, so I guess I will have to do it myself more systematically. I have yet to submit the volcano paper that you are a coauthor of -- this is inconsistent with the Schlesinger/Andronova result too. If I went to the sensitivity meeting, this would be a good paper to present. The puppy is fine -- but most of the work in looking after it falls on my shoulders. In Japan I presented a talk on new overshoot stabilization profiles. There is some introductory material on climate feedbacks on the carbon cycle. The new version of MAGICC does this better than in the TAR version, but the concentration projections are very similar to those in the TAR version. If you are interested I could send you the full ppt prersentation. Best wishes, Tom.