cc: tim Osborn date: Wed Nov 1 11:16:47 2000 from: Keith Briffa subject: Re: PAGES UK mailing to: "Eric W Wolff" , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Dear Eric In response to your questions I have just returned from a meeting that I and Dominique Raynaud organised , with funding from PAGES,NSF, and SCAR. This was concerned with High Resolution Variability of the Holocene (HIHOL) and brought together over 40 invited participants to southern France to review the latest Forcing, marine and terrestrial records , as well as simple and coupled climate and vegetation model work. Beside myself, from the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA, Pete Rowe represented the European Speleothem community and Tim Osborn discussed Empirical climate reconstruction. Other UK speakers were Sandy Tudhope (Edinburgh) and Ben Horton (Durham) - for details of the aims,overarching questions, program and participants see the web site at [1]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/projects/hihol/ A special issue of the journal Holocene is planned , in which five review papers will address evidence for Forcing and Global signals ; High-Latitude Ice; Oceans (mainly the North Atlantic); Palaeo-monsoon (including Model results) and Continental Hydrology;and Extra-tropical terrestrial records. A final paper will attempt an overall state-of-the-art synthesis. In terms of new results , I and several colleagues have a paper in press in JGR -atmospheres in which we present a new , virtually independent reconstruction of hemispheric-mean summer temperatures , based on tree-ring data, spanning the last 600 years (as well as several smaller-scale , but still sub-continental, regional series). Our hemishere series agrees well on multi-decadal/ century time scales with other series (such as the Mann et al. , Jones et al. and recent Crowley and Lowery data) and support the concept of anomalous warmth (in a millennial context) in the 20th century. However, our explicit representation of the 2 standard errors that bracket our hemispheric temperatures , stress the very large uncertainty that accompanies our own early estimates, and is at least as likely for the other curves. Our new curve will be included in the Observations chapter of the TAR. Finally, I am currently working , ( as second author) along with Ray Bradley, Julie Cole and Malcolm Hughes (all from the U.S.) on Chapter 6 of the forthcoming IGBP PAGES Synthesis Volume . Our topic is "The Climate of the Last Millennium". At 08:33 AM 10/30/00 +0000, Eric W Wolff wrote: To: UK PAGES mailing list (please advise of additions, corrections, deletions), After the very successful UK meeting in March, i thought I should stay quiet for a while. However, we have one of the (twice-yearly) meetings of the UK IGBP National Committee (on which I am the only person with PAGES interests) on 23rd November, and this has prompted this mailing, with a few small items. 1. If anyone has anything appropriate that I should raise as an issue at the UK IGBP NC then please let me know. Obviously this meeting has limited power and influence, but it can get its views in at the highest levels of both NERC and IGBP, so if there is a major nurning issue, please do let me know. 2. Equally, I am expected to give a few minutes report on PAGES, both from a national and international viewpoint. I am expected to give a summary next Monday. So, could you please let me know (this week) any major pieces of PAGES news that I can slip in. Of particular interest would be big new results/papers, PAGES sponsored or related meetings that you have attended this summer, and any activity you may have been involved in for the PAGES synthesis report. Thank you. 3. News: I have been telling this list about the NERC PRESCIENT thematic programme that is coming up. The plan had been to issue an Announcement of opportunity in August, with a town meeting soon after. However, in August, the SC members received a message from NERC saying "Although we have no reason to believe that the funding for the programme is in question, owing to the DGRC (Director General Research Council)'s constraints the NERC Chief Executive feels that the required prudence should extend to the Announcement (for Prescient) being delayed until the full details of the Spending Review are finalised. We should be able to issue the Announcement within the next three months, with the subsequent events correspondingly delayed". This is very disappointing. We have been told that we were not the only delayed programme. However there has been complete silence from NERC since August, so I have no further news. I think we should continue to be optimistic, so expect an AO and Town Meeting soon. NERC did tell us that a Science Coordinator has been identified, who can start on the programme as soon as the go-ahead is given. 4. The latest PAGES information can be found at the International PAGES web site at [2]http://www.pages-igbp.org/ I am sure most of you are aware about the big IGBP Global Change Open Science Conference "Challenges of a Changing Earth" to be held at 10-14 July, 2001, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. See [3]http://www.sciconf.igbp.kva.se/ I will of course report any important issues that come out of the IGBP UK NC meeting. Best regards Eric ---------------------------- Eric Wolff British Antarctic Survey High Cross Madingley Road Cambridge CB3 0ET United Kingdom E-mail: ewwo@bas.ac.uk Phone: +44 1223 221491 Fax: +44 1223 221279 (note new number) Alternate fax: +44 1223 362616