date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 17:50:40 +0100 from: Sandy Tudhope subject: Re: IMPRINT Budget (Work package 1) to: Keith Briffa , Tim Osborn , dirk.verschuren@UGent.be, eystein.jansen@geo.uib.no Dear Keith, Tim, Dirk and Eystein, Many thanks for the messages and draft documents regarding IMPRINT. It is an exciting project, and I am delighted to be involved. Pulling this together is a major effort, and I am very grateful to you all. I have just spoken with Tim, so have already discussed with him much of what follows. Briefly: a) I attach the Partner details for Edinburgh as requested. b) I attach a document that provides a few comments and suggestions on IMPRINT (the overall draft outline and the more detailed Work Package 1 description), as well as detailing where I envisage Edinburgh can contribute, and an indicative outline budget for us. c) I suggest a budget of 260,000 Euro for Edinburgh, but of course am happy to discuss this in due course. At this stage my comments are relatively minor. The main suggestion is that we could justify more clearly our geographical focus. Europe is obvious, but it was not quite so clear why Africa was included and other regions 'excluded'. Are we including Africa because we believe that it holds the key to European climate (and if so, which regions and components of African climate), or is Africa included more for socio-economic reasons (future climate variability and change in Africa are likely to have major socio-economic repercussions for Europe)? In my view, we should focus on those areas and components of the climate system that are likely to be major determinants of climate variability and change in Europe. Given my background, it will not surprise you to hear that I suggest we include some consideration of the major climate drivers in the tropics since these are almost certain to play a role in determining European and global climate on a wide range of timescales. In particular, I think some knowledge of change in the tropics (e.g., in ENSO and the monsoons) will be crucial to testing GCM skill at predicting and hindcasting climate change. However, I accept that boundaries must be set, and I am happy to express my views but go along with the consensus. What is the next stage? Regards, Sandy Keith Briffa wrote: > Dear Partners in Workpackage 1 of IMPRINT, > > today is the deadline by which Eystein requested input as regards the > reworked (and necessarily much shortened), proposal document. We have > also been making some effort to consolidate the indicative budgets > that most of you have sent to us. > We now need to transfer these figures to Eystein , even though a few > partners have not > supplied numbers to us , though they may have sent them to Eystein > directly. > > It is clear that we are now close to 30 partners in Workpackage 1 > alone, and have indicative budget requests totaling well over the > nominal 5 million Euro originally allocated. In fact , the likely > total with all partner requests included is likely to be nearer to 10 > million! > We have been given a (very unofficial) hint from Brussels that an > "appropriate" total project request of about 17 million for IMPRINT > might be sensible , with a final figure , if the project ever gets > accepted, of 15 million being possibly awarded (subject of course to > referees' comments and subsequent reorganisation of priorities). > The simple message is that Eystein will now have to make an executive > decision as to the total amount requested . > If we ever get that far, reorganised budgets will have to be decided > on the basis of very specific > work plans that will need to formalised for a second submission - > especially as they relate to the justification for field work and new > data analyses. We also need to budget for the involvement of > non-partners , possibly using a mixture of workshop and minor funding > awards to facilitate data collection etc. > It has been made clear that new practical work campaigns would not be > sanctioned across all Tasks > in Workpackage 1 . Rather, the bulk of work would involve > re-dating/interpretation of mostly existing data and reconstructions > of forcings and climate . Specific cases will have to be made to > justify sampling and processing of new data. > Thanks to all of you for your help and thanks to Eystein for taking on > the enormous task of organising this proposal . > > Keith and Tim > > -- > Professor Keith Briffa, > Climatic Research Unit > University of East Anglia > Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K. > > Phone: +44-1603-593909 > Fax: +44-1603-507784 > > http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/ -- _____________________________________________________________________ Dr Sandy Tudhope, School of GeoSciences, Grant Institute, Edinburgh University, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JW, Scotland, U.K. Tel: +44 131 650 8508 (direct) +44 131 650 4842 (secretary) Fax: +44 131 668 3184 e-mail: sandy.tudhope@ed.ac.uk AND: Dr Sandy Tudhope, c/o School of Oceanography, Box 355351, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-5351, U.S.A. Tel: +1 206 612 3243 e-mail: AND Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\Edinburgh IMPRINT details.doc" Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\Tudhope comments 19 October 2004.doc"