cc: s.boland@uea date: Tue Oct 27 12:55:15 1998 from: Keith Briffa subject: Vienna and Norwich to: csander@aixh0401.holz.uni-hamburg.de, hleusch@gwdg.de, K.Briffa@UEA.AC.UK, niels.bonde@natmus.dk, j.hillam@sheffield.ac.uk, thomas.bartolin@natmus.dk, PADRUOT.NOGLER@WSL.CH, c.m.groves@sheffield.ac.uk, Matti.Eronen@Helsinki.fi, Wibjorn.Karlen@natgeo.su.se, grudd@natgeo.su.se, eckstein@aixh0401.holz.uni-hamburg.de,zetter@cc.joensuu.fi , i.tyers@sheffield.ac.uk, m.salmon@UEA.AC.UK, marco@pkdb.botanik.uni-hohenheim.de, lindholm@joyl.joensuu.fi, mauri.timonen@roi.metla.fi, Esther.Jansma@archis.nl, olafur.eggertsson@geol.lu.se, hasse@natgeo.su.se, bjorne@natgeo.su.se, Maarit.Kalela-Brundin@svek.slu.se, j.spain@qub.ac.uk, m.baillie@qub.ac.uk, TWAZNY@plearn.edu.pl Hi everyone I thought I'd just give a brief report of the Vienna meeting that I attended last week. It turned out that all climate-related projects funded under Framework 4 were represented. Interestingly, some have only just started and have a couple of years to run. The large majority are now winding up . In my opinion, the week went pretty well for us in as much as my presentation seemed well received. I have to say a special thankyou here to Marco and Rashit and Eugene, who came up with some nice results and plots at short notice. I did my best to give a fair display of the different aspects of our project, so the network and long chronology development and the oak work all got equal time . I heard, indirectly ,that Troen thought our results and my talk(!) were very good. However , I think we have a long way to go to show added value from the intergration of the different aspects of the work , which must be clear in our Holocene special issue. There was a discussion of the likely format of the Framework 5 call, but it is clear that the precise details of this call are not in place yet. I was hoping that I might be invited to be one of the experts asked to put this together but it looks like this is not to be. One thing is clear. There will be a climate change section but this will be incorporated in a wider area of projects that come under a general heading of Ecosystem preservation / biodiversity! I did see seasonal/annual/decadal variabilty , in the past and future, specifically mentioned and my feeling is that the general priorities of the CLIVAR Implementation Plan will figure strongly in their thinking. I also got the strong message that large interlinked projects ( how large I don't yet know) are very much back in fashion. I suspect this will mean having to link with other discilpines - say within an 'Arctic' or 'western European' context. The worry is that the whole emphasis has now swung to 'problem solving' and integated assessment of the consequences of change rather than just establishing the details of change per se. The ministers are still arguing about the budget so that the best guess regarding the next call is probably still around March 1999. There is always the worry , however, that they will suddenly jump at vey short notice to an earlier, say January, call. The question of data availability and release , and large scale data management were much discussed and we must confirm our timetable for the release and format of our data during the Norwich meeting. I have now to write the short paper for the proceedings of this meetin and am still waiting on most of your very brief ideas of what are the MOST important points to stress in this regarding the different aspects of the work. At this moment I expect Mike Baillie John Spain Hakan Grudd Bjorn Gunnarson Hans Linderholm Matti Eronen Marcus Linderholm Mauri Timonen Pentti Zetterberg Maarit Brundin Olafur Eggertsson Niels Bonde Thomas Bartholin Hubert Leuschner Along with me and a few hangers on from here that will mean only about 15 or 16 people taking part in the meeting. I have had no word from Ian and the other Sheffield Mafia, nothing from Thomas Wazny. I have no funds to invite our Russian colleagues and I know that Esther. Wibjorn and Fritz can not make it. I am now confirming the room bookings for the 4 nights , Wednesday 11th through Saturday 14th inclusive for all those people listed above. If this is wrong , please let me know immediately if this is wrong. Thanks Keith