date: 26 Oct 2009 10:19:58 +0000 from: "J. Atmos. Solar-Terrestr. Phys." subject: Reviewer Notification of Editor Decision to: p.jones@uea.ac.uk Ref: ATP1923 Title: Distinguishing Paleoclimate Reconstructions from Instrumental Series Article Type: Special Issue: Mursula SpaceClimate Dear Dr. Phil Jones, Thank you once again for reviewing the above-referenced paper. With your help the following final decision has now been reached: Reject The author decision letter can be found below. We appreciate your time and effort in reviewing this paper and greatly value your assistance as a reviewer for Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. If you have not yet activated or completed your 30 days of access to Scopus, you can still access Scopus via this link: http://scopees.elsevier.com/ees_login.asp?journalacronym=ATP&username=PJones-376 You can use your EES password to access Scopus via the URL above. You can save your 30 days access period, but access will expire 6 months after you accepted to review. Yours sincerely, Margriet ten Napel Journal Manager Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics To: "Irina Knyazeva" iknyazeva@gmail.com From: "J. Atmos. Solar-Terrestr. Phys." atp-eo@elsevier.com Subject: ATP1923, Editor decision Ref.: "Distinguishing Paleoclimate Reconstructions from Instrumental Series" (Mrs. Irina Knyazeva) Dear Mrs. Knyazeva, I very much regret to have to tell you that publication in our journal is not recommended. An explanation for this decision is given in the attached review reports (and on http://ees.elsevier.com/atp/). I hope that the comments contained therein will be of use to you. Thank you for your interest in our journal. Kind regards, For the Editor, Margriet ten Napel, Journal Manager Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics .......................................................... Important note: If a reviewer has provided a review or other materials as attachments, those items will not be in this letter. Please ensure therefore that you log on to the journal site and check if any attachments have been provided. .......................................................... COMMENTS FROM EDITOR AND REVIEWERS Dear Authors, Your manuscript has been reviewed by two expert reviewers (see detailed statements below). Both recommended rejection of the manuscript. Based on that, I regret to inform you that the manuscript cannot be considered to be published in the Space Climate topical issue of JASTP. ============================================== Reviewer #1: Review of Makarenko et al (ATP 1923) This paper has rather an odd title, but it sums up the paper. I cannot see any point in all the mathematics. Much can be seen from looking at the proxy series that make up these reconstructions and the instrumental data. I recommend rejection of this paper. It does nothing to advance the field of paleoclimatology, and I also can't see why you are even bothering to send the paper out for review. If I was looking for a paper looking at paleoclimatic data, I would not look for it in the JASTP. I do not understand any of the mathematics, but I do understand instrumental and paleoclimatic data. As I've said this paper doesn't advance the science one iota. What is need is more reconstructions and extensions to instrumental data. It would have been better to have understood the proxies better and also to have considered that there might have been issues with the early instrumental data. I'm not going to waste my time pointing out the numerous things that are wrong with this paper, but list just a few. 1. The various reconstructions of the last 1000 years are not competing with each other. This is a very naive view of paleoclimatology. 2. It is expected that the reconstructions won't agree with instrumental data: this is why they are called proxy data!! 3. There are far more informative papers comparing paleoclimatic reconstructions and they are written in climate journals - see for example Lee et al. (2008). The methods used in the combination are almost as important as the proxies used. 4. There are many more reconstructions of the last 1000 years. In fact there are far too many. We don't need any more. Instead we need improvements to the reconstructions and we need more in the SH and the Tropics. 5. In the Introduction, I have little idea what the 4th to 8th sentences mean. 6. I'd suggest the authors read the paleoclimatic literature and find out what is going on. A good recent review of what the different areas of paleoclimatology is Jones et al. (2009). 7. Much of the mathematical parts of the paper are unintelligible. If you want paleoclimatologists to read this, you first have to make it readable and then you have to publish it in a climate journal paleoclimatologists are going to read. 8. The mathematical techniques could be tried out on GCM output. Paleoclimatologists are using these data and sections in the Jones et al. (2009) indicate why GCM output is useful. This is referred to pseudo-proxies, where the answer - the global surface temperature is known.