cc: simon.tett@metoffice.gov.uk, Dominique Raynaud date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 15:27:21 +0100 from: Eystein Jansen subject: Brussels and Imprint to: Keith Briffa Hi Keith, Simon and Dominique, I talked with Brelen today. He is handling the paleo-IP in the Commission. They have not yet found a replacement, so he continues, which is good in this process. He was very friendly. I had sent him an overviw of the partners which he had asked for to avoid inviting people as experts reveiwers who are involved in the proposal. He complimented our ability to attract the bets groups in Europe. I invited myself to Brussels, and he said they were hesitant to do this because they are afraid of paying favours to any special project. He said he would check with Troen about this policy, and came back and said they would prefer to avoid such meetings during this phase. Thus, we need to do remote lobbying. Since you all have good contacts, or your institutions have, it would be wise to contact Brelen, and more importantly Troen or other people in the Global Change Unit to ensure that they a) Realise how the Imprint approach is a major undertaking of the best European labs to really make paleoclimate make a difference to the predictions and modelling activities. b) Underscore the close connections to Ensembles, c) Go through with them how they interpret the wording of the call, to make sure we have a joint understanding of what it means in terms of being relevant for predictions and climate dynamics. From the review of the competing Millennium proposal it seems that these aspects of the call were not considered much. We need to influence the comission as far as possible so that they know what they will miss if the project is not funded. Best regards, Eystein -- ______________________________________________________________ Eystein Jansen Professor/Director Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research and Dep. of Earth Science, Univ. of Bergen Allégaten 55 N-5007 Bergen NORWAY e-mail: eystein.jansen@geo.uib.no Phone: +47-55-583491 - Home: +47-55-910661 Fax: +47-55-584330 ----------------------- The Bjerknes Training site offers 3-12 months fellowships to PhD students More info at: www.bjerknes.uib.no/mcts ----------------------------------------------------------------------------