cc: Carolin Richter date: Mon Jul 27 17:26:46 2009 from: Phil Jones subject: Re: Report of IPCC Scoping Meeting to: Kevin Trenberth , Adrian.Simmons@ecmwf.int Adrian, Agree with Kevin about Thomas being somewhat fixed in his ways. I think a few things will come back to haunt Thomas later in the process. I got the impression that there would be more interaction with WG2, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. When the authors are selected there needs to be some interaction between Ch 2 and 3 and also between 2 and 14 to decide where various bits come. Thomas wanted very short bullets that wouldn't allow issues of overlap to be addressed adequately. As for surface, I made sure SST is in the surface and atmosphere. Waves and swell will likely end up in Ch 2, as I got the impression the oceans don't want to do it. Depends what the oceans think of as a surface process, circulation and fluxes There are longer summaries that will be given to the Ch leads once known. As Kevin says I tried hard to get rid of the word archives. It is proxy records (natural and documentary). Traditional dusty archives will be in Ch 2 as the vast majority are instrumental of some sort. Ch 2 and 5 will need to determine a time threshold as we did last time (1850 was the date last time). Cloud obs and all the problems should be in Ch 2. With extremes there is an issue of what will be in Ch 2 and 14. Tropical and extra-tropical storms (and drought) will be in 2, but 14 may get extremes of precip and temperature. Kevin made the point that extremes are part of the whole distribution. This comes of having a regional chapter and trying to put extremes in it! 14 also has a few things like patterns of variability and monsoons that will be discussed in 2. Extremes also has a special report starting soon - crossing WG 1-3. The authors for that get chosen in September. Ch 14 was supposed to have lots of tables in supplementary material, which seems to have fallen off. I did mention gaps in knowledge and what we need to know, but this got missed out. I'd raise all of these - as they are within GCOS. Cheers Phil At 16:06 27/07/2009, Kevin Trenberth wrote: Hi Adrian Several comments on the scoping meeting. I found Thomas very intransigent wrt any suggestions made in the meeting. I was called out to co-chair a cross cutting task group on water and that took over a day out of my being involved with WG 1. While we got a full chapter on the topic in WG 2, our report had almost no impact on WG-1 and I was thoroughly PO'd. Precipitation is not given much prominence and soil moisture, ground water, and lake storage are not mentioned. I treid to get a breif mention of "land water storage" to embrace these aspects and actually the total is a big issue for sea level as well. There should also have been a bullet in the last chapter on the synthesis of the water cycle aspects. I can send you our TG report if you don't have it. More below Adrian Simmons wrote: Dear Carolin I have now had a look through the report of the IPCC Scoping Meeting held in Venice two weeks ago, on which GCOS has an opportunity to comment. I have only a few minor comments on the outline of the WG I report, and am not sure any of them are worth raising formally - I'm copying this to Kevin Trenberth and Phil Jones, who may well be able to respond and put matters to rest. (i) I'm pleased to see the chapter on "Observations : Atmosphere and Surface" has been moved from number 3 to number 2 for AR5. It's good to see the disappearance of the historical review, which I did not find particularly balanced in AR4, and the radiative forcing discussion moved to later in the report. (ii) I'm rather confused by what is meant by "surface" in Chapter 2. It clearly includes sea-surface temperature, but apparently nothing else to do with the surface of the sea, as "Changes in ocean surface process" is a topic for Chapter 3. I can see why SST has a natural home in Chapter 3 along with atmospheric observations, but as ocean surface waves are so strongly linked with atmospheric forcing, and rather directly indicative of shifts in atmospheric circulation (albeit with swell effects to confound interpretation), I wonder whether they are not best covered in Chapter 2. Soil moisture, on the other hand, does seem to be in Chapter 2, in "Changes in hydrology ...". This was originally atmosphere and land surface and it was only after I pointed out that the global sfc T had to be done somewhere that it was broadened to surface. Anything atmospheric dominated (incl waves) surely has to be there. (iii) I have a problem with the title of Chapter 5 - "Information from Climate Archives". Vast amounts of the WG1 report will be based on information from Climate Archives - Archives of observations made anytime from Centuries to a few hours ago, reanalyses, results of climate model runs. Archives don't only hold old data - they are updated regularly with new data. I can appreciate why the former title of "Palaeoclimate" was dropped, but don't find the replacement any better. Many of us strongly disagreed with the wording here (including Phil and me). But the French loved the word "archive". There seemed to be strong resistance to using paleoclimate and Phil and I suggested "Information from proxy records". I would encourage GCOS to comment. A few of us (including David Warillow (sp?)) thought paleo should be distributed and not a separate chapter. From the user and stakeholder viewpoint and other WGs that is clearly true. But being distributed would make it harder for the paleo guys to caucus and depend a lot more on the one expert in each chapter (as happened last time with sea level). (iv) "Observations of clouds ..." comes up in Chapter 7, but I imagine it will be hard for Chapter 2 to cover changes in the radiation fields and energy budgets and in hydrology, without discussing clouds. But as long as there is good editorial control and interaction among the lead authors this should not be much of a problem. Likewise with regard to "Changes in radiation fields" in Chapter 2 and "Radiative forcing changes" in Chapter 8. Chapter 7 should not be observations of clouds; those must be in chapter 2, except insofar as they relate to process. And so all the cloudsat and calypso obs etc are likely to end up here. The thing to remember here is that the bullets here may well determine who gets selected as LAs. So small refinements can be worthwhile. If chapter 2 does not have anyone who can handle radiation or clouds then it won't happen. I think that's more or less it from the observations side, except that in the WG I chapters I do not see anything like "Gaps in knowledge" as a sub-heading, whereas I do see this sub-heading in several chapters of the WG III report. There is also a sub-heading on "Research gaps" in the WG II outline. Worth noting. Kevin I've a few other reactions to what I've read, but they are not to do with GCOS's business. Best regards Adrian -- **************** Kevin E. Trenberth e-mail: trenbert@ucar.edu Climate Analysis Section, [1]www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/trenbert.html NCAR P. O. Box 3000, (303) 497 1318 Boulder, CO 80307 (303) 497 1333 (fax) Street address: 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80305 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------