date: Mon Feb 21 12:30:52 2005
from: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: proposition of text - not sure if is enough convincing!
to: Valerie.Masson@cea.fr

   Ok Valerie,
   if you say 1.3 milllion for 1.1 send this out .
   please put task 1.1 at At 11:53 21/02/2005, you wrote:

     Proposition of email to task leaders AND SSC . To be also distributed to all
     participants to WP1 (Keith, we urgently have to do this because WP1 seems very obscure
     to them).
     Here is the current situation for WP1. We have been working on a "bottom up" process
     asking to the various partners their deliverables together with requested costs, with
     task leaders being responsible for priorities within their tasks.
     The current status of budget requests is the following per task
     1.5   1.14 M euros (reconstruction of forcings)
     1.4  0.958 M euros (reconstruction of hydrological variability)
     1.3 0.885 M Euros (centennial to millenial scale var)
     1.2 1.095 M Euros (decadal to centennial var)
     1.1 (last 2 millenia)
     Many partners have already warned that their participation in IMPRINT would be
     endangered if they had to reduce their EC request, because they would not be able to
     provide the deliverables without a minimum funding!
     The situation is extremely difficult to handle because the scientists were reasonable in
     designing the costs per deliverable, and the various deliverables are needed to obtain a
     real assessment on the forcings and variability during the Holocene.
     Tasks 1.5 outputs are clearly requested by the modelling community (improved knowledge
     of forcings with uncertainties). The other outputs will be critical for model data
     comparisons and to understand interglacial climate variability organization.
     The initial budget for WP1 was estimated to about 5 million euros and this is also the
     current amount requested by the participants to provide new inputs. The somehow
     arbitrary cut to 3.7 M euros is impossible to fit with the expected deliverables. It may
     be feasible to have reasonable deliverables with an overall budget of about 4.2 M Euros
     and still major decisions have to be made :
     - do we cut new methods (still present in the forcing task)?
     - do we re focus some of the work on selected periods for which modellers will put more
     emphasis?
     On the continental part this decision is very critical because the "marine" partners
     also apply for funding in WP2 and 3 but for terrestrial records this WP1 is the only way
     to integrate this community.
     We strongly believe that WP1 outcomes are key to the full project and are necessary to
     progress in the basic understanding of climate variability and sensitivity to a range of
     various forcings.
     Valerie.

   --
   Professor Keith Briffa,
   Climatic Research Unit
   University of East Anglia
   Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.

   Phone: +44-1603-593909
   Fax: +44-1603-507784
   [1]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/