date: Tue Dec 7 17:12:30 2004 from: Phil Jones subject: Re: our IJC manuscript to: Anders Moberg Amders, Apologies for the slow reply. 1. IPCC section is called 'Changes in Extreme Events' . Albert has reviewed many studies, but there aren't that many before 1950 and not many for other continents. Try saying that this is one of the first studies going back this far. I can't find the comments at the moment. 2. Central Europe is OK, but we do also look at western Europe. I would go with western. Agrees with robust indices for extremes. 3. I'll email you the current IPCC report and you can look at what Albert's written. Ignore the remainder, just 3.8. There are some that look at precip and see increases in extremes, even though the mean in decreasing. Mostly for temperature extreme trends are consistent with mean changes. 4. Urban influences are unimportant - see this paper in Nature. We are looking at regional effects therefore, they are not local. Other papers attached by mistake, but relevant anyway. How did the interview go ? Cheers Phil At 10:37 07/12/2004, you wrote: Phil, At last I have got the nose enough above the water to look at our IJC manuscript again. I agree with your suggested strategy. There are some points where you could help me if you have time: 1. What is the planned title for the IPCC section you mention? Could you give some more argument from the IPPC work to not make any changes in response to the main criticism by ref A? 2. Should we change "moderate extremes" in the title to something like "robust indices for extremes" to get rid of the "anachronism" the reveiwer B mentions. More about title: shall we use Central Europe instead of just Europe? I think this is a good idea. 3. Are there any good references that discuss both changes in the mean and extremes in Europe (to follow up on the reviewer A's wishes)? Do you have any favourite papers that discuss trends in precip and/or temperature in Europe? 4. What is your feeling about the suggestion by ref B that urban influence is important for causing the trends in the station series we used? Is it that important? Cheers, Anders At 15:10 2004-10-14 +0100, you wrote: Anders, Thanks for replying to Aad so thoroughly whilst I've been away ! As for the comments, I was reading some responses Marie had made to two special issue papers from the SWURVE project. She did a good job of dismissing the reviewer's comments in a response to the editor and only ended up making a few changes to the manuscript. I say this as I suggest you follow the same route here. I think if you sent back a revised paper taking into account some/most of B's comments and just point out to Glenn (politely) that A doesn't know what they are talking about ! A's minor points are OK - are we going to use colour? Basically though A is living in another world. He/she has no idea because - just thinks the daily series are sitting out there (you could mention a little more about getting access to the series. It is partly a lack of digitised series and also national policies re availability). EMULATE will help, but there is so much more that could be done. - our paper title is roughly what we will call the section in IPCC report ! Globe instead of Europe. That will have no focus on the means, just the extremes. The current study is about extremes. There have been countless ones about the mean ! You could mention that a few studies have tried to link extremes to changes in the mean and variability, but this is really difficult because the quality and quantity of the data are not really up to it. The studies quoted have only looked at a couple of locations and used mainly model output. Hope you're in agreement with this. Cheers Phil At 15:27 11/10/2004, you wrote: Here is the deleted message: Phil, Just got the review of our extremes trend paper. It was posted on 22 Sep, s ito took long time from Britain to Sweden. I have posted photocopies of the review to you. Hope the return journey is much faster! In summary: Rev A found the study useful and careful, but wanted us to focus on EITHER precip OR temp, but on BOTH means AND extremes (ultimately leading to TWO papers). This would require lots of work, and I don't want to do this. Will have to argue against this - possibly by telling the editor that much more will be done in EMULATE. Rev A was also disappointed by the bad data coverage, e.g. no Iberian data. (EMULATE will help here...) Rev B had a number of points where he wanted us to deepen the discussion, but overall he thought the paper was GOOD. He also implicitly revealed himself as being Scandinavian and most likely he is Heikki Tuomenvirta. Tell me what you think when you have seen the review. Cheers, Anders Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------