date: Tue May 27 13:29:34 2008 from: Phil Jones subject: Re: Met Office Hadley Centre Scientific Review Group - Email Review to: "sue hammond" , "John Harries" Sue, Here's a few comments - resulting from the dreary bank holiday weekend. I didn't read everything just the documents where I thought I could say something useful. First in the numbered documents 1-8 1. Intro - it would seem that the issue we were having trouble with when we last met has now become Climate Products! It is still referred to as Climate Impacts elsewhere. It does seem as though the issue of branding has been addressed. I hope it is just as obvious during the presentations in November. 2. The Northwest Passage has been open for some more summers than just 2007. Hopefully we will get to see how well HadGEM1 gets to simulate the reduction in Arctic sea-ice extent. 3. It would be useful to see the two Sexton et al (2008) publications for our meeting. I'll get these anyway being involved in UKCIP08. It might be useful getting a presentation on UKCIP08 during our Nov 5-7 meeting, as the national launch is on Nov 20. This would help understand part of item 6 on the generation of the pdfs. I'm thinking here of the rest of the group as the information given here is quite brief. Quite useful for the rest of the UK people with the launch 2 weeks after our meeting. 4. In relation to UKCIP08 the number of RCM perturbed physics runs has been reduced from 17 to 11. 5. By Nov 5-7 there will be more concrete results of the model/obs comparisons related to lower tropospheric lapse rate changes. In this respect (and probably elsewhere) there could have been more links to work going on outside MOHC that many within MOHC are aware of. 6. Minor aside - useful to know the number of MOHC staff who got the Nobel Peace Prize certificates. 7. Another minor aside - I wouldn't have though that the expert witness statements re Al Gore's film being distributed to UK schools as a highlight! 8. In section 2, I would like to hope that DEFRA is being told not to worry that much about climate fluctuations on interannual timescales relating to ENSO variability. Should be telling DEFRA that what matters is the 5-year plus timescale. I suspect that these notes to DEFRA were requested, but relate to skeptic blog sites and poor media reporting. I just want to be assured that DEFRA are getting the right message. 9. Also in section 2, there are brief details of papers on SST. There is a paper coming out in this week's Nature (May 29) that also relates to SST. There is an MOHC author on the paper. AATSR isn't that widely known generally, and it seem to me that this brief document isn't fully aware of the big picture with respect to SST issues recently related to the dominance of drifters and buoys now as opposed to ships. MOHC seem to be aware of the big picture when it comes to D&A issues, but not when it comes to SST, or it doesn't come through in this document. 10. The GRUAN initiative is to be applauded, as it addresses some of the problems that resulted from MOHC's decision to no longer be a monitoring centre for the GUAN. Figure 1.4 relates back to my #5 above. Cheers Phil At 13:06 19/05/2008, sue hammond wrote: Dear Colleagues, You are aware that the annual cycle for meetings of the MOHC SRG has changed and that there will be a period of 18 months from the 2007 meeting to the 2008 meeting in November. It was proposed that a brief email review of some aspects of the work of the MOHC be undertaken earlier in 2008 while we adjust from Spring to Autumn meetings and to ensure some continuity. On behalf of the SRG Chairman, John Harries I am attaching a number of documents from the Met Office Hadley Centre (MOHC) which are listed below. John is very grateful to the MOHC in providing the papers but is aware there is a lot of material (although items 1, 3 and 5 are just 1 page). He has requested that you look through the material and provide any brief comments on any aspects you would like to comment on. John has asked me to stress that this is very much a light review and the main review and report will be the main meeting in November. Please note Item 2 is particularly long and will be sent in a following email. John suggests for this brief review it could be used just for reference and will be reviewed in more detail for the main meeting. Please could I request that you send any comments to me by Monday 9 June. We will collate any comments received and then John will send these round for any final comments/approval before forwarding to the MOHC. If you do not wish to make any comments it would help if you could send me an 'no comments' email. Papers: 1. SRG introduction 2. Annual Technical Report (to be sent in a separate e-mail) 3. Science Strategy Cover Page 4. Hadley Centre Science Strategy (vn3.2) 5. Collaboration Strategy Cover Page 6. Collaboration Strategy 7. Annual Statement of Met Office Hadley Centre climate modelling (ICP 2.1.4) 8. Strategy for Seamless Model Assessment (ICP Q4) Please do contact me if you have any questions. Many thanks and kind regards, Sue Sue Postle Hammond, ESYS plc, Secretariat for the GECC and Hadley Centre Scientific Review Group on behalf of Defra Tel/Fax: 44 1243 574810 Mobile: 07785 988696 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------