date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 10:25:59 -0500 to: Phil Jones , ray bradley , mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu from: "Michael E. Mann" subject: Re: WMO Climate Statement for 1999 - IMPORTANT ! cc: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk, t.osborn@uea.ac.uk Hi Phil, Thanks for sending that along. The text looks good, and I agree w/ everything that is said. I think its a strong but defensible statement, and will help to bolster the claims to be made in IPCC. The '99 numbers are very interesting, and should help thwart the dubious claims sometimes made that El Nino is the sole culprit in the anomalous recent warmth. Just for comparison to what Tim is producing, I'm attaching the plot you may remember that we (actually, the UK Met Office staff) prepared for the final version of the IPCC chapter 2 draft (in pdf format). To refresh your memory, we used the '61-90 base period for the absolute anomaly scale, but we aligned the series based on an earlier ('31-60) interval of the instrumental record, which pre-dates (largely) the recent decline in the Briffa et al series. I think this leads to a similar picture, but if you think there are any significant discrepancies w/ what Tim is preparing, we should discuss. Thanks again for your efforts. Lets be in touch soon re the PAGES/CLIVAR stuff (as Keith probably mentioned to you, we all got saddled w/ post-meeting responsibilities). cheers, mike At 09:20 AM 11/16/99 +0000, Phil Jones wrote: > > Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm, > On the Friday last week, whilst most were still in Venice, I was in > Geneva attending the last day of the WG on Climate Change Detection of > WMO/CCL and CLIVAR. All the proxy items on the agenda were left for me to > deal with and it was certainly worth going. Keith has given me a brief > rundown on what happened in Venice on Thursday pm and Friday. > > The pertinent item from Geneva concerns the WMO statement on the Climate > of 1999. WMO has been issuing these for the past 6 years. There are 10,000 > printed each time. There were two possibilities for the front cover (1998's > showed the instrumental record from 1856) - the millennial long temperature > series or the contrasting storm tracks for 1998 and 1999. I was the only one > voting for the latter - partly personal as I knew I would have to organise > the former. I was outvoted 12-1, maybe because in a brief presentation I > oversold the advances made in paleoclimate studies over the last few years ! > > That's the background. WMO want to go with the millennial record on the > cover and I said I would produce something and some text. The figure will > be the 3 curves ( Mike's, mine amd Keith/Tim's). Tim is producing this > curve (all wrt 61-90 and 50 year smoothed). Each will be extended to 1999 > by instrumental data for the zones/seasons they represent. The attached > text briefly discusses the differences and what is shown. The text is >attached > as a word file. It is probably a little too long and is, as you'll see, > very brief. If you want anything changed/added then delete something. > Can I have your feedback asap as I have to get the text and the diagram to > Geneva by Nov 29 ? > > There will be a press release in Geneva on Dec16 - they need two weeks > to approve the text internally. The full text of the report is then printed > during Feb 2000 - last year's was 12 pages long. It will be released on > March 15 in Geneva to coincide with WM (World Met) day and the 50th > anniversary celebrations of WMO as well. WMO are planning to print at least > twice as many copies as usual and were talking about 25,000 ! > Copies go to all WMO members and are distributed at countless meetings > and sent to loads of address lists available. > > I hope you'll all be willing to go along with this and can live with the > brief text. All the previous issues have been referenceless - I'm trying to > circumvent this with the web page addresses for more info. > > Cheers > Phil > > PS I hope you can all cope with the word97 format. > > >Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\wmocover.doc" > >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 > >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\NH_temp_trends2.pdf" _______________________________________________________________________ Professor Michael E. Mann Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22903 _______________________________________________________________________ e-mail: mann@virginia.edu Phone: (804) 924-7770 FAX: (804) 982-2137 http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.html