cc: Gabi Hegerl date: Fri Apr 17 17:09:37 2009 from: Phil Jones subject: Re: input for proposal to: claudia tebaldi , Michael Wehner Claudia, Mike, I dropped a few of the reply list. The papers that I've been involved with are these four. I can't see the first one on the site. I think the fourth may be from the previous project, but it could be from the first year. The thrust of my input has been in two areas - the humidity dataset work (with Nathan). The Nature paper shows that you can detect and attribute a climate change signal in surface humidity data. It also shows that this increase in q (specific humidity) is a direct result of the increase in T. RH stays roughly the same (as a hemispheric average), which is something climate models have done for ages. So this was an observational proof of a feature that has been with us for ages. The J. Climate paper is about the dataset used in the Nature paper. The Nature Geosciences paper is Nathan's about Arctic and Antarctic temperatures. This completes the detection and attribution for these areas that were omitted in Ch 9 of AR4. The fourth was about a rapid change that occurred in Europe in the first half of the 18th century, so indicating what is possible from just natural changes in climate. This was in Task 2.5. The work I'm currently doing relates to developing a dataset of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) for the world's land areas (except for the Antarctic and Greenland). Once finished, I'd like to move on to doing some D&A with the dataset. The rationale for looking again at PDSI was that there were numerous questions about the metric in the comments on Ch 3 of AR4. PDSI is calculated from precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET). Traditionally PET has been calculated with the Thornethwaite formula, but hydrologists don't like this. We've calculated PDSI using both Thornethwaite and a Penman formula (this uses more than just temperature, including sunshine/cloudiness, vapour pressure and wind). Hydrologists like this formula, but as PDSI is based 90% on precip, the use of either formula makes very little difference to large-scale patterns of PDSI. I still have to write up this PDSI work. I will get there, but there is one paper I have to do first. The PDSI work is in Task 2.4 or 2.5. The IDAG web page seems unclear here. I think it should be 2.4. Cheers Phil At 00:02 16/04/2009, claudia tebaldi wrote: Dear all, Hope this finds you well. Michael and I are starting on the new IDAG proposal. At this time, we need to ask you for a -- hopefully not too time consuming -- form of feedback: Could each of you send us -- at the earliest convenience -- a list of your IDAG-relevant publications, from 2006 to present-day, including work in press, and a few paragraphs (or a series of bullet points) summarizing the thrust of your D&A activities since the beginning of 2006? This all will go in the "Scientific Background" section of the new proposal. Thank you very much from both of us best, Claudia & Michael -- Claudia Tebaldi Research Scientist, Climate Central [1]http://www.climatecentral.org currently visiting IMAGe/NCAR PO Box 3000 Boulder, CO 80305 tel. 303.497.2487 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------