date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:50:27 -0400 (EDT) from: glenn.mcgregor@kcl.ac.uk subject: JOC-08-0029 Invitation to Review for the International Journal of to: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk 19-Mar-2008 Dear Dr Osborn Manuscript # JOC-08-0029 entitled "IPCC and attribution of 20th century lower tropospheric temperature changes." has been submitted to the International Journal of Climatology. This is a quick reminder that a week ago I invited you to review this manuscript. The abstract appears at the end of this letter, along with the names of the authors. Please let me know within the next few days if you will be able to review this paper. If you are unable to review this paper, would you take a moment to please recommend one or two other possible referees with expertise in this area. Please could you indicate your response by emailing me directly, or if you do wish to review the manuscript you can use the link below to grant yourself instant access to the manuscript. To respond automatically, click below: Agreed: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/joc?URL_MASK=SbCwCyRq8GrZkd7tTHFR If you do accept this invitation to review we will contact you via email with instructions for accessing our online manuscript submission and review system. You will then have access to the manuscript and reviewer instructions in your Referee Centre. I would ask that you complete your review within 6 weeks. Sincerely, Dr Glenn McGregor International Journal of Climatology MANUSCRIPT DETAILS TITLE: IPCC and attribution of 20th century lower tropospheric temperature changes. AUTHORS: de Laat, Jos ABSTRACT: Recently the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its fourth assessment report. Chapter three of working group I, entitled “Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change” contains a critique of two particular papers that concluded to have identified non-greenhouse gas warming effects in surface and lower tropospheric temperatures. The IPCC critique claims that those papers misinterpret warming related to circulation changes as non-greenhouse gas surface processes. However, a close investigation of the supporting evidence provided by IPCC shows that their claim is unfounded. Since IPCC should be an open and objective assessment of the latest scientific literature, this raises a number of questions about the objectivity and transparency of the assessment process, as well as whether the IPCC reports provide a suitable platform to publish such criticism. It is argued that the presence of such a critique conflicts with IPCC‘s own procedures and that there are still procedures present within the IPCC assessments that conflict with its aim of transparency. Furthermore, the rebuttal of the papers is in line with a general neglect of the effect of many (anthropogenic) non-greenhouse gas processes on global and regional temperature variations, for which sufficient evidence is present in scientific literature that they do affect lower tropospheric temperatures. Those processes should be considered in attribution of temperature changes and may have important consequences for our understanding of recent and future climate.