date: Tue Jun 24 10:09:31 2003 from: Keith Briffa subject: Re: Hellooooo- back to: "Raymond S. Bradley" Hi Ray thanks for the communication - True I had said to Malcolm that I thought you had expunged me from your "people to interact with " list - most likely because of my extremely poor contribution to (and lack of frank communication over ) the Chapter in the PAGES book. Truth is , my back was bad and got worse towards the end of last year and I had to drop a couple of things , which I really do not like doing. I could have said a lot more about the Chapter but the main content was good and as you put in so much effort on it I did not want to seem churlish . I still think it is very useful summary of the state of things , which is what it was meant to be. I hope that did not influence your judgement re that Palaeoclimate Group , for which you have mistakenly chosen to include Phil instead of me ! Now to the comments re the EOS piece. I believe you criticised the inclusion of the 2000 (Eurasian ) tree-ring series (since reiterated by Malcolm). Fair enough , though again misguided in my opinion if on the basis of "contains few data " or " has weak climate response" . I was perfectly happy to drop it ( I never suggested its inclusion in the first place), but I find it somewhat ironic that it should be replaced with the latest (Mann and Jones) series that contains the same three series plus a mixture of other far more dubious (not to say bad ) series - I agree with the remarks you made re some of these (particularly the Chinese series) in your recent email to someone. I consider that this new series (plus the illustration of the Western US series in the EOS) piece will "stimulate further discussion " in the field , both between we palaeo-types and the Sceptics . I and Tim have been left to submit this and the balance of pressure seems to be to submit as is - if we remove the suspicious Chinese series we would have to delay things further (Ellen is hassling for us to submit) and , anyway, it is still contained in the Long series. I am of the opinion that the points made in the piece still stand - and by signing on , we are not individually sanctioning all the curves or data used in the illustrations ( There are genuine problems with ALL of them). We will therefore , add Malcolm's name and submit the version we now have. Hope this OK with all. Finally, Mike and I have been asked (by Lennart Bengtsson) to present a paper at the CLIVAR/PAGES Conference next year in Baltimore [1]http://www.clivar2004.[2]org. Our bit is about the climate (Global /Hemisphere ) of the instrumental period , but I take this to be the last 1000 years . We will be asking our co conspirators (ie the EOS list) to be joint contributors (though Peck is presenting another similar subject (longer period) paper - the precise balance between these time scales needs to be struck yet). Also I am organising a session at a European Community Conference to be held next year in Holland - my session is "How warm was the Medieval period in the context of the late Holocene" and although I will probably not be asking you (or me!) to present one of the two invited papers (but I might end up asking you) I hope and expect that you, and the rest ,to agree to be authors of one of them. I hope you will be able to ? I believe you are writing a paper with Malcolm and Henry on the MWP? Can you give me an idea of its scope ? I am hoping to do something of a large review of the "contribution of tree-ring data to global climate histories" along with Ed and others. Sorry about you problems , but remember life is sweet and best wishes to Jane. Keith At 02:31 PM 6/22/03 -0400, you wrote: Hi Keef: Why is it raining so much here? New York has just surpassed the June 1903 record of ~10inches, and it's only June 22nd....right now it's teeming down...could be a monsoon. No doubt global warming must have something to do with it...or that cut-off Low that's stuck here... Malcolm said you are feeling a bit better after a pretty rough time of it. I've been meaning to write and give you my sympathy. I've occasionally had back problems that have been debilitating, but nothing like you've had, I'm sure. Anyway, I was happy to hear that things are picking up for you. The last month here has been pretty grim--the Soon & Baliunas business has opened my eyes to the devious and cynical nature of the Bush Administration--it's far worse than I imagined. Pretty depressing. Then the University budget got slaughtered-- we've had cuts amounting to 29% over the last couple of years....and I also had a couple of NSF proposals turned down....then Jane's knee problems forced us to cancel our walking holiday in France. Time to move to Canada --or anywhere-- I think... I reckon we've had an inch of rain in the past two hours.....high temperature for the year was back in April.... So I hope I cheered you up! Ray Raymond S. Bradley Distinguished Professor Director, Climate System Research Center* Department of Geosciences Morrill Science Center 611 North Pleasant Street AMHERST, MA 01003-9297 Tel: 413-545-2120 Fax: 413-545-1200 *Climate System Research Center: 413-545-0659 <[3]http://www.paleoclimate.org> Paleoclimatology Book Web Site: [4]http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/paleo/html -- Professor Keith Briffa, Climatic Research Unit University of East Anglia Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K. Phone: +44-1603-593909 Fax: +44-1603-507784 [5]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[6]/