date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 16:41:17 +0200 from: Frank Oldfield subject: Submission to NERC to: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk Dear Keith, Sorry it has taken so long to respond to this - a rather hectic time as ever, then I go off to the States tomorrow. I think you've done a great job and I find it hard to comment on the strategic aspects; not least because I was only very rarely a successful grant getter, which makes me think I don't have a very good mind set for doing these things. Here are a few questions - Does it stress benefit to UK enough? (as distinct from benefit to UK science and especially the Hadley Centre) Is it worth emphasizing more the dependence of all future planning of responses (crops/freshwater/renewable resources of all kinds) to global change on the reliablity of CLIMATE models? People in some other fields may need this ramming home, the more so since I think regional impacts will be higher and higher on the funding agenda from now on. Chronology is paramount and much of the work already done is at least partly compromised by poor dating control (as well as relatively low temporal/stratigraphic resolution). Maybe some stress on the need for additional PALAEO work meeting the goals of dating control + resolution + calibratable proxies needs to be made; possibly also ref. not only to tephra, but to the NERC C-14 dating capability and TIMS (eg. at OU) Links by UK scientists to international programmes of all knds - EU funded; PAGES-type stuff etc etc are very high in this whole research area. maybe a bit more can be made of this since it guarantees a lack of parochiality as well as a high potential for drawing in international resources to the endeavour. Beyond these points, I've made a few trivial observations on the text - mostly in CPAS and between !! !! I've returned the modified attachment both in Word 98 and Word 5. On another tack - is their anything we should be doing here in PAGES to help your Holocene publication plans along. I've looked over the outline you gave me again - it seems just great. Finally - in the middle of these very substantial and urgent commitments, what chance the Newsletter stuff and when? Replies on this to Keith Alverson who will be pulling it together. All the very best, Frank Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\Themepro2.doc" Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\Themepro.doc_-Wd5.doc" ____________________________________________ Frank Oldfield Executive Director PAGES IPO Barenplatz 2 CH-3011 Bern, Switzerland e-mail: frank.oldfield@pages.unibe.ch Phone: +41 31 312 3133; Fax: +41 31 312 3168 http://www.pages.unibe.ch/pages.html