date: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:22:56 +0000 from: Adrian Simmons subject: Re: Paper causing a stir to: Phil Jones Thanks, Phil. From just reading the abstract, I think I would have rejected it, as I would not trust the trends in the original NCEP reanalysis, which is from a production system which is a generation earlier than ERA-40 - and ERA-40 needs to be used with caution as one goes higher. The NCEP trends at the tropopause and in the lower stratosphere are certainly way off the mark. I'm currently resisting the temptation to look at humidity trends in ERA-Interim above 850hPa. I think we have enough to present in our current paper, and I'd like to give priority to finishing writing it. I suspect as one gets to the middle and upper troposphere, the ERA humidities will shift as the satellite observing system changes, and as radiosonde instruments change. To date we've not implemented any bias correction/homogenisation of sonde humidities - for the future we hope that some proposed work by June Wang, Aiguo Dai and Leo Haimberger will get funding. June and Aiguo are visiting the Met Office this summer, and will be calling in at ECMWF. All the best Adrian Phil Jones wrote: > >> Adrian et al, > The attached may be of interest - but it is just based on NCEP! > There are caveats, but they could have easily looked at ERA-40 or JARE-25. > Garth Paltridge is making waves on Climate Audit about this paper being > rejected by J. Climate. > > Cheers > Phil > > > > > 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 > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- -------------------------------------------------- Adrian Simmons European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Shinfield Park, Reading, RG2 9AX, UK Phone: +44 118 949 9700 Fax: +44 118 986 9450 --------------------------------------------------