cc: Sandy.Tudhope@ed.ac.uk, matcollins@meto.gov.uk, t.osborn@uea.ac.uk date: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 12:02:02 +0000 (GMT) from: Simon Tett subject: Summary to: Keith Briffa Dear Keith, Tim, Sandy and Mat, here is a brief summary of what (I think) we agreed. 1) We are going to put together an EU proposal. 2) This proposal will include continuation of the high density tree-ring density network work (UEA, Swiss, Finns, Russians and Swedes), some modeling work (HC, MPI), tropical pacific coral data (Sandy at Edinburgh) and some comparison work (UEA, HC, and MPI) 3) Keith will write a 2 paragraphs or so project aims email. i.e what questions are we trying to answer. 4) I'll talk to Ulrich to thrash out the modeling details. 5) All partners should put in a preliminary list of tasks and timescales by 24/12/99. 6) We need to be aware (and our proposal needs to provide evidence that we can meet them) of all the other EU criterion apart from scientific excellence. Therefore we should have some resource in the proposal for dissemination to both the scientific community, to the general public and to the policy community. We would expect the following skills/information to be developed. Modellers to have a better appreciation of proxy data -- what it is good for and bad for! The Proxy community to have some appreciation of the issues that worry Modellers. We also plan to develop people with the skills to use models to understand and interpret proxy data -- a new breed! We talked about having tasks for each group with timescales. I think we thought that straight forward. One issue we talked about was quality criteria. I think we thought that an open meeting with invited experts (for the data) was one way forward. Papers would be reviewed within the project. What about software?? Outputs (with the info) would be modeling centres who would use it to produce better models. Think we need to justify modelling work! At this stage we are attempting to do model validation. I guess major motivation is with possible future climate change. Users of the info on "real" climate variability would be: 1) Energy 2) Agriculture -- note euro agriculture is fairly homogeneous and so more sensitive to 10 cold years in a row! 3) Insurance industry (re-insurance really!) Must mention Kyoto, "Dangerous" climate change, "surprises", CLIVAR, PAGES and could nick justifications from those documents. Simon -- ============================================================ + Spinning in the wind at the UKMO + ============================================================ Tel : +[44]-1344-856886 Fax: +[44]-1344-854898