date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:19:54 -0000
from: "Mitchell, John FB \(Chief Scientist\)" <john.f.mitchell@metoffice.gov.uk>
subject: Holland response
to: "k.briffa@uea.ac.uk" <'k.briffa@uea.ac.uk'>, "Brian Hoskins" <hoskins@met.reading.ac.uk>, "jean.jouzel@ipsl.jussieu.fr" <'jean.jouzel@ipsl.jussieu.fr'>

   For info- my response to David Holland

   John

   Dear Mr Holland,

   Thank you for your letter of 22 February 2008. I apologise again for the delay in replying,
   I have been away from my office much of the intervening time and also, in view of the width
   of your questions, I have also consulted IPCC.

   You raise two main points in your letter.

   Your first question concerns the grounds for one of the citations in chapter 6 of the
   Working Group I Report. The IPCC process assesses the published scientific and technical
   literature, and in some cases `gray literature', based on the judgement of the authors.
   Gray literature is used very seldom in Working Group I (but more frequently in Working
   Group III, for example in the form of technical reports from industry). Unpublished draft
   papers or technical reports referenced in chapters are made available to the reviewers for
   the purpose of review. This does not include the underlying datasets used as IPCC has
   neither the mandate nor the resources to operate for a clearing house for the massive
   amounts of data used in the referenced papers.  Note IPCC's role does not include the
   governance of research, or the requirements of scientific literature.

   Your second question concerns the conduct of review editors. You should note that the
   review editors do not determine the final content of the chapters.  It is the authors that
   are responsible for the content of their chapters and responding to comments, not the
   review editors.  All of the comments and all of the authors' responses have been made
   available, and are the proper source for anyone wishing to understand what comments were
   made and how the authors dealt with them. It would be inappropriate to provide more
   information beyond the web pages already freely provided.

   For my own part, I have not kept any working papers. There is no requirement to do so,
   given the extensive documentation already available for IPCC. The crux of the review
   editors' work is carried out at the lead authors meetings going through the chapters
   comment by comment with the lead authors.

   I hope this answers your two main concerns.

   Professor John Mitchell OBE FRS Chief Scientist,
   Met Office FitzRoy Road  Exeter  EX1 3PB  United Kingdom
   Tel. +44(0)1392884604  Fax:+44 (0) 870 9005050
   E-mail: john.f.mitchell@metoffice.gov.uk [1]http://www.metoffice.gov.uk