date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 18:33:56 +0100 from: "Eric W Wolff" subject: PAGES UK mailing to: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , To: UK PAGES mailing list Dear all, I normally send out these mailings just before the UK IGBP national committee meets, and that is in late May, so here is another mailing. 1. If there are issues that you think should be considered by the broad multidisciplinary group that the IGBP NC is, then please let me know. Also, any important new inputs by any of you to international PAGES science or organisation would be useful to me, as I have to report about PAGES and UK involvement. Thanks. 2. I have been keeping this community informed about the NERC thematic programme PRESCIENT. Many of you will know that the NERC Science and Technology Board recently took the decision to amalgamate PRESCIENT with another thematic called Abrupt Climate Change - Thermohaline Circulation. These are now in a new thematic called RAPID. The old PRESCIENT steering committee no longer exists although some of its members will sit on the RAPID SC. It is not yet clear whether all of PRESCIENT's aims will be included in RAPID, nor whether the funding that had been earmarked for PRESCIENT will be nominally ring-fenced within RAPID. One can say many things about how this decision has been reached and what it means. However, attempting to be positive, if we are lucky and skillful, we still have a major thematic that we can hope to get funding from over the next few years. We will have to convince the SC of the critical value of palaeoclimate both in understanding abrupt climate change, and in improving earth system models! 3. Information about PAGES internationally can be found as usual at http://www.pages.unibe.ch/. 4. I promised Suzanne Leroy that I would pass on information about a meeting to be held in 2002: "Environmental Catastrophes and Recoveries in the Holocene" to be held at Brunel in September 2002, see: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/depts/geo/suzannesub/catastrophes.html Best regards Eric (PAGES rep on UK IGBP NC) ---------------------------- 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