cc: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk,t.osborn@uea.ac.uk date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 09:20:35 +0000 from: Phil Jones subject: WMO Climate Statement for 1999 - IMPORTANT ! to: ray bradley ,mann@virginia.edu, mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm, On the Friday last week, whilst most were still in Venice, I was in Geneva attending the last day of the WG on Climate Change Detection of WMO/CCL and CLIVAR. All the proxy items on the agenda were left for me to deal with and it was certainly worth going. Keith has given me a brief rundown on what happened in Venice on Thursday pm and Friday. The pertinent item from Geneva concerns the WMO statement on the Climate of 1999. WMO has been issuing these for the past 6 years. There are 10,000 printed each time. There were two possibilities for the front cover (1998's showed the instrumental record from 1856) - the millennial long temperature series or the contrasting storm tracks for 1998 and 1999. I was the only one voting for the latter - partly personal as I knew I would have to organise the former. I was outvoted 12-1, maybe because in a brief presentation I oversold the advances made in paleoclimate studies over the last few years ! That's the background. WMO want to go with the millennial record on the cover and I said I would produce something and some text. The figure will be the 3 curves ( Mike's, mine amd Keith/Tim's). Tim is producing this curve (all wrt 61-90 and 50 year smoothed). Each will be extended to 1999 by instrumental data for the zones/seasons they represent. The attached text briefly discusses the differences and what is shown. The text is attached as a word file. It is probably a little too long and is, as you'll see, very brief. If you want anything changed/added then delete something. Can I have your feedback asap as I have to get the text and the diagram to Geneva by Nov 29 ? There will be a press release in Geneva on Dec16 - they need two weeks to approve the text internally. The full text of the report is then printed during Feb 2000 - last year's was 12 pages long. It will be released on March 15 in Geneva to coincide with WM (World Met) day and the 50th anniversary celebrations of WMO as well. WMO are planning to print at least twice as many copies as usual and were talking about 25,000 ! Copies go to all WMO members and are distributed at countless meetings and sent to loads of address lists available. I hope you'll all be willing to go along with this and can live with the brief text. All the previous issues have been referenceless - I'm trying to circumvent this with the web page addresses for more info. Cheers Phil PS I hope you can all cope with the word97 format. Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\wmocover.doc" 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------