date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:47:57 +0100 from: "M.D.Bateman" subject: [supranet] [Fwd: Re: Outline Paper] to: supranet@lists.shef.ac.uk HI, I concur with James - looks like a good framework. My comments for what they are worth are... [1] para 1.5 I would like to see the paper move away from this "position paper" stance which comes across as too much like self promoting supranet. I would like for the paper to have an aim to review existing approaches for identifying and quantifying uncertainties in palaeoclimatic data followed by a discussion of how new approaches might be applied to resolve some of the previously identified outstanding issues. [2] as the risk of being accused of self-promoting the following two references deal with issues associated with non-climatic influences of proxy record - namely bioturbation.... Bateman, M.D., Boulter, C.H., Carr, A.S., Frederick, C.D., Peter, D., Wilder, M. (2007). Detecting Post-depositional sediment disturbance in sandy deposits using optical luminescence. Quaternary Geochronology 2, 57-64. Boulter, C., Bateman, M.D., Frederick, C.D. (2007). Developing a protocol for selecting and dating sandy sites in East Central Texas: Preliminary results. Quaternary Geochronology 2, 45-50. [3]paragraph 2.4 comes across at present as quite negative. We must strive hard with this paper to provide an unbiased review AND also to provide examples of positive outcomes. In this paragraph I would like to see a counter-balance of a proxy record where assessments of uncertainty are pretty well quantified. Again I may be bias but a chronology case study here might provide this balance. [4] Not sure about section 4 which again sounds like "positioning" supranet for research grants rather than providing information to a readership. I would advocate some sort of summary of where we are at, the exciting first steps that have been taken with bayesian and then a paragraph of areas where we can see a need for improvements. [5] couldn't see the point made anywhere that whilst being more open about all uncertainties in palaeoclimate data may be painful in the short-term (and lead people to wonder whether any interpretations are possible) the longer-term better understanding of uncertainty and application of statistical approaches will be able to better resolve the uncertainty and give probabilistic information of different interpretations. cheers mark -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [supranet] Re: Outline Paper Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:44:30 +0900 From: James Annan To: supranet@lists.shef.ac.uk References: <4874DF04.3060305@sheffield.ac.uk> Hi Tamsin (especially) and all, I have a few comments and references. Overall, it looks like an excellent framework to me. First, I think the term "inverse modelling" will be widely misinterpreted and needs to be changed and/or carefully used. Many, certainly in the climate science/numerical modelling readership, would describe any generic process of using observational data to estimate climate state variables or hidden model parameters as "inverse modelling" (ie, effectively inverting whatever forward model is under consideration). Indeed para 2.1 seems to keep this meaning. But as I understand it, the term was often being applied in the workshop (and apparently also in the paper, eg para 3.1) as specifically limited to simple regression-based calibrations. If you want the distinction I would be tempted to describe it as process-based models vs purely statistical models but maybe someone will object to that... I don't understand paragraph 3.5, but then again I don't know what the reference is! But Guiot et al 2000 (ec. mod.) explicitly describes his work as following a Bayesian approach. I'm not sure where and how (or even if) any of the following should fit in - maybe around 2.4 - so have not attempted to actually write chunks of text: Refs 1 and 2 (below) are possibly useful references that talk about methods for creating climate fields out of proxy measurements. They only really discuss the issue of getting from a set of point measurements to a spatial field though, leaving the proxy-climate calibration to someone else. If you want an example of climate state reconstruction with explicit error estimates (para 2.4), then 3 may be a good example, but it is based on modern observations and they are looking at ocean transports rather than temp/precip. [There are also the reanalysis projects (NCEP is the most famous - I believe the Kalnay et al 1996 paper in BAMS is the most cited ever in the geosciences - but there are also ERA-40 and JRA-25) which have reconstructed the time-varying atmospheric state over the past several decades, but that may be a bit of a stretch in terms of relevance.] There are also some somewhat relevant references in these three papers 1-3 which talk about paleoclimate as deduced from blending observations and modelling in various ways. Also 4 is a recent example on both stacking, and generating chronology for, sediment cores, with a rather vague discussion of uncertainty. It seems that there are already well-established plug-and-play Bayesian methods that could (presumably) improve on this. 5 is the best PMIP ref, which seems needed in the text. If anyone can't easily access these papers I can send pdfs. James refs: 1: @article{paul2005csp, title={{How to combine sparse proxy data and coupled climate models}}, author={Paul, A. and Sch{\"a}fer-Neth, C.}, journal={Quaternary Science Reviews}, volume={24}, number={7-9}, pages={1095--1107}, year={2005}, publisher={Elsevier} } 2: @article{schaferneth2005pmm, title={{Perspectives on mapping the MARGO reconstructions by variogram analysis/kriging and objective analysis}}, author={Sch{\"a}fer-Neth, C. and Paul, A. and Mulitza, S.}, journal={Quaternary Science Reviews}, volume={24}, number={7-9}, pages={1083--1093}, year={2005}, publisher={Elsevier} } 3: Ganachaud and Wunsch (2000). A. Ganachaud and C. Wunsch , Oceanic meridional overturning circulation, mixing, bottom water formation and heat transport. Nature 408 (2000), pp. 453–457 4: Lisiecki, L. E., and M. E. Raymo (2005), A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic d18O records, Paleoceanography, 20, PA1003, doi:10.1029/2004PA001071 5: Results of PMIP2 coupled simulations of the Mid-Holocene and Last Glacial Maximum – Part 1: experiments and large-scale features P. Braconnot, B. Otto-Bliesner, S. Harrison, S. Joussaume, J.-Y. Peterchmitt, A. Abe-Ouchi, M. Crucifix, E. Driesschaert, Th. Fichefet, C. D. Hewitt, M. Kageyama, A. Kitoh, A. Laîné, M.-F. Loutre, O. Marti, U. Merkel, G. Ramstein, P. Valdes, S. L. Weber, Y. Yu, and Y. Zhao Clim. Past, 3, 261-277, 2007 -- James D Annan jdannan@jamstec.go.jp Tel: +81-45-778-5618 (Fax 5707) Senior Scientist, Frontier Research Centre for Global Change, JAMSTEC 3173-25 Showamachi, Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama City, Kanagawa, 236-0001 Japan http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/ -- Dr. Mark D. Bateman Reader in Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction Sheffield Centre for International Drylands Research Department of Geography, Winter St., University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2TN E-mail M.D.Bateman@sheffield.ac.uk Tel: (+44) 0114 222 7929 Fax: (+44) 0114 279 7912 SCIDR Website: http://www.shef.ac.uk/scidr/ Dept Website: http://www.shef.ac.uk/geography/staff/bateman_mark.html