From: Phil Jones To: Peter Thorne , Dian Seidel Subject: Re: Dian, something like this? Date: Thu Jan 10 17:20:56 2008 Cc: Ben Santer , Tom Wigley , Karl Taylor , Thomas R Karl , John Lanzante , Carl Mears , "David C. Bader" , "'Francis W. Zwiers'" , Frank Wentz , Leopold Haimberger , Melissa Free , "Michael C. MacCracken" , Steve Sherwood , Steve Klein , 'Susan Solomon' , Tim Osborn , Gavin Schmidt , "Hack, James J." Ben et al, As Dian has said Ben's diagrams are as usual great! I also like the one that Peter has just sent around as that illustrates the issue with the various RAOBCORE versions. Although I still think they should have used HadCRUT3v for the surface, I know HadCRUT2v shows much the same. What this figure shows is the differences between the various sonde datasets. Dian/Peter also make the point that there are other new datasets to be added - so the sondes are very much still work in progress. I know you will point out all the analytical/statistical issues see the series brings home the issues better. I know you could add the values to your Fig1, a plot like this is much better. In the email Ben, you seem to have written much of the response! Whichever route you go down (GRL/IJC) the text can't be too long. I would favour copious captions, and even an Appendix, to get the main points across quickly. Cheers Phil At 14:43 10/01/2008, Peter Thorne wrote: All, as it happens I am preparing a figure precisely as Dian suggested. This has only been possible due to substantial efforts by Leo in particular, but all the other dataset providers also. I wanted to give a feel for where we are at although I want to tidy this substantially if we were to use it. To do this I've taken every single scrap of info I have in my possession that has a status of at least submitted to a journal. I have considered the common period of 1979-2004. So, assuming you are all sitting comfortably: Grey shading is a little cheat from Santer et al using a trusty ruler. See Figure 3.B in this paper, take the absolute range of model scaling factors at each of the heights on the y-axis and apply this scaling to HadCRUT3 tropical mean trend denoted by the star at the surface. So, if we assume HadCRUT3 is correct then we are aiming for the grey shading or not depending upon one's pre-conceived notion as to whether the models are correct. Red is HadAT2 dataset. black dashed is the raw data used in Titchner et al. submitted (all tropical stations with a 81-2000 climatology) Black whiskers are median, inter-quartile range and max / min from Titchner et al. submission. We know, from complex error-world assessments, that the median under-cooks the required adjustment here and that the truth may conceivably lie (well) outside the upper limit. Bright green is RATPAC Then, and the averaging and trend calculation has been done by Leo here and not me so any final version I'd want to get the raw gridded data and do it exactly the same way. But for the raw raobs data that Leo provided as a sanity check it seems to make a miniscule (<0.05K/decade even at height) difference: Lime green: RICH (RAOBCORE 1.4 breaks, neighbour based adjustment estimates) Solid purple: RAOBCORE 1.2 Dotted purple: RAOBCORE 1.3 Dashed purple: RAOBCORE 1.4 I am also in possession of Steve's submitted IUK dataset and will be adding this trend line shortly. I'll be adding a legend in the large white space bottom left. My take home is that all datasets are heading the right way and that this reduces the probability of a discrepancy. Compare this with Santer et al. Figure 3.B. I'll be using this in an internal report anyway but am quite happy for it to be used in this context too if that is the general feeling. Or for Leo's to be used. Whatever people prefer. Peter -- Peter Thorne Climate Research Scientist Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, EX1 3PB tel. +44 1392 886552 fax +44 1392 885681 [1]www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- References 1. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs