date: Fri, 6 Jun 2008 16:05:08 +0100 from: John Haslett subject: SUPRAnet Session on Palaeoclimate modelling and statistical methods to: Caitlin Buck , Edouard Bard , Paula Reimer , Mark Bateman , David Richards , Mel Knight , James Annan , Michel Crucifix , Julia Hargreaves , Gabi Hegerl , Michael Evans , Stephen Brooks , Nicki Whitehouse , Regine Röthlisberger , Atte Korhola , Barbara Wohlfarth , Keith Bennett , Maarten Blaauw , "Stephen T. Jackson" , Brian Huntley , Christoph Spoetl , Dan Charman , Lasse Holmström , Clive Anderson , Caitlin Buck , Michael Goldstein , Andrew Millard , Andrew Parnell , Jonathan Rougier , Marian Scott , Eleanor Stillman , Rob Wilson , David Lowe , Keith Briffa , Tamsin Edwards , Peter Challenor , Philip Brohan , Katy Klauenberg , Richard Wilkinson , John-Paul Gosling , Julie M Jones , Hanna Sundqvist , Jo Brown , Oliver Heiri , Bo Li , William Austin , Lindsay Collins , Luke Skinner , Gerrit Lohmann , Michael Salter-Townshend Dear all This mail concerns the Session Wed 14:30 - 16:30 Palaeoclimate modelling and statistical methods I'm mailing it to all, even though some of you will have interests focussed on other parts of the meeting. I'm not sure that I have an up-to-date sub-list. Jonty Rougier and I have been charged with structuring this part of the workshop. The following are proposals. We (JH, JR) would appreciate constructive criticism. We anticipate some informal discussion on the Tuesday evening where we can finalise these proposals. We make these proposals in the context of the overall workshop commitment to deliver 'product'; see below. We note that this will be the last of the formal sessions. It will have been preceded by several sessions on 'evidence from' various sources. But here the focus will be more explicitly on the workshop theme "uncertainty in palaeoclimate reconstruction". There will however have been almost no previous discussion on modelling per se. We propose thus to structure the session by using the first hour to provide 'tutorials' on some basic issues, and then to use the remaining hour to identify SOME of the open issues. We would be interested to hear from people who might be able to play a role here, recalling that we do want to finish the week with concrete next steps As I understand it, there remains quite a lot of flexibility in how we use our time, especially on the Thursday JH Overall, it seems to us that there are two big inter-related questions for THIS session: Why is it so hard to compare proxy based reconstructions with those from physical models as in GCMs? How and where can we best use GCMs and proxies jointly to clarify and reduce uncertainties about the palaeoclimate? Proposal 1 20 min tutorial on GCMs, barely touching on uncertainty 2 20 min tutorial on modelling 'system uncertainty', given several sources of information, each with its own uncertainty, including GCMs 3 10 min on current work at the interface of proxy reconstructions and GCMs. This will be followed by a less formal, but nevertheless structured, discussion on 'open questions' and 'the way forward'. For this latter part of the session, we hope to identify a VERY few people who will be prepared to lead discussion and to contribute to 'product'. Such people might each have prepared a VERY short (<5 mins) presentation. Open questions include: ......... Recall that two forms of 'product' have already been identified: 1) a position paper on quantifying and modelling uncertainty in palaeoclimate reconstruction intended for a major journal such as Nature Geoscience and 2) plans for several (c. 4) funding proposals to be written over the 6-9 months following the meeting (for which we have extra travel funds). John Haslett E-mail John.Haslett@tcd.ie Professor Phone +353 1 8961114 (direct) Department of Statistics +353 1 8961767 (sec) School of Computer Science Fax +353 1 6770711 and Statistics Room 146 Trinity College Dublin 2,Ireland WWW: http://www.tcd.ie/Statistics/JHpersonal/research.htm