Dear Tom,
Thanks for your message and papers. The problem is clearly one of the
science-policy interface. If science cannot demonstrate that it makes a
difference in terms of avoided climate change and impacts if GHG
concentrations are stabilised, why bother? Currently a Danish guy, Björn
Lomborg, is making the headlines again (Guardian, New York Times,
Economist), TV programmes, etc.) telling the public (and policymakers)  not
only that there aren;'t any environmental problems, but also, even if
climate change may be real, it does not make any sense at all to do
something about it, since efforts to control GHG emissions are expensive
and the mitigation would not make any difference at all anyway in terms of
avoiding negative consequences. Very popular message. Now clearly,
scientists should clearly explain what they can say about this issue. My
expectation would indeed be that comparing climate changes resulting from
reference cases and from stabilization cases would not be distinguishable
until well into the 2nd half of the century (like in the GRL paper), but if
this is so, so be it. 2050 seems a lot closer now in 2001 (2050 is THIS
century and our childrens' lifetime) than it was in 1999 (when 2050 was
something of the next century and some abstract next generations). It is a
matter of communication skills to get the message across about the long
timescales and inertia of the systems involved, and the difficulty of
identifying the climate change signal in the noise of natural variability.
I would be curious what your opinion is about the UK work of Nigel Arnell,
Martin Parry, John Mitchell and others, analysing the (significant) avoided
impacts of 550 stabilisation from an IS98a reference. Another strategy of
concerned scientists may be not to do these analyses at all in order to
avoid a possible result that the differences between reference and
stabilisation can not be demonstrated in a scientifically credible and
unambiguous way and hence climate policy action may be obstructed. To me,
this does not seem to be the honest way to go.
I am not sure what this all implies for the planned recommended
stabilization runs. Your points about the climate sensitivity and non-CO2
gases are well taken. I am not sure the sulfur emissions in the proposed
post-SRES scenarios would make a lot of difference, since already in the
SRES base cases sulfur emissions are pretty low, and these would only be
slightly different (usually lower) in the stabilisation cases. You suggest
"carefully constructed idealized scenarios". Do you mean carefully
constructed from the climate system point of view in order to get
"distinguishable results", or carefully constructed from the socio-economic
point of view so as to analyse real-world consistent and plausible futures
(the latter is what Morita's exercise tried to achieve)? My answer would
be: both.
I'd like to reflect a little bit more on this and since I am a scenario
expert rather than a climate expert, await reactions from people more
expert in the area of climate modelling, like Sarah, Mike and Tim, and
Martin himself as chair of the TGCIA.
Thanks again,
Rob
Tom Wigley
edu>                 cc:     parryml@aol.com, tim.carter@fmi.fi, m.hulme@uea.ac.uk,
s.raper@uea.ac.uk, Tsuneyuki MORITA
, steve smith
25-08-01
, (bcc: Rob Swart/RIVM/NL)
01:47                Subject:     Re: TGCIA scenario recommendations
Please
respond to
wigley
Rob and others,
The key thing with doing stabilization runs with AOGCMs is (as Rob says)
that the different cases "would have to be distinguishable from one
another". This is the crux of the problem (in fact, it is a non-trivial
problem even to define what is meant by "distinguishable from one
another").
A few years ago we decided to try to do some matched no-climate-policy
and (550ppm) stabilization runs where the two scenarios had some
semblance of realism. (It turns out that the only similar work is that
done by the Hadley Ctr, but the scenarios they used are highly
idealized.) Our runs were also idealized in that we only changed CO2 --
in the best scientific tradition of changing only one thing at a time to
assess sensitivities. The first results of our exercise (using CSM) are
in Dai et al., J. Climate 14, 485-519, 2000. A number of things were
clear from this. First, one cannot tell much from single realizations of
the two cases -- ensemble runs are essential. Second, as we already knew
from running simple models, the no-policy and stabilization runs diverge
only slowly. Even after 50 years, the two are only just distinguishable
at the global-mean level; so, clearly,differences at the regional level
(especially for precipitation) would not be detectible above the noise
of natural variability.
So our next step was to do ensembles of 5, this time using PCM instead
of CSM (this paper is in press in BAMS -- for a pdf preprint, look at
www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/). Even then, for ensemble means, the
separation between the no-policy and stabilization cases is slow. So I
devised an extended no-policy case out to 2200 (50 years beyond where
the CO2 level stabilizes in the stabilization run), and we extended some
of the runs out to 2200. This work is in press in GRL (and downloadable
from the above site). Additional important results come from these
experiments. One important result is that, even for precipitation, the
*patterns* of change are not detectibly different between the no-policy
and stabilization runs. A second important result is that, for most of
the world the intra-ensemble differences are similar to or greater than
the underlying signals of change. Distinguishing the no-policy and
stabilization runs therefore presents a much greater challenge than any
of you probably realize.
There are two issues to keep in mind, however. The first is that PCM and
CSM have quite low climate sensitivities. So, will things be different
if one used a more sensitive model? I suspect not in any major way. The
reason is because inter-annual variability tends to be higher in more
sensitive models, so the signal-to-noise ratio may not change much. This
also applies to the intra-ensemble noise, since the root cause of these
intra-ensemble differences is the internal variability of the model.
The second issue is that we have only changed CO2 in our experiments. We
know that attempts to stabilize CO2 via emissions reductions also affect
SO2 emissions -- so perhaps the no-policy and stabilization cases might
be more distinguishable if one accounted for these concomitant SO2
effects? I have addressed this issue at the global-mean level in a paper
on stabilization that I will attach to this email. (A more extensive
analysis is in another paper, with Steve Smith as my co-author, that I
am not ready to share with anyone just yet.) My judgment, as someone
with quite a lot of experience in this area, is that having full spatial
details will not make the problem any easier; since, as the spatial
scale is reduced so the noise increases.
My recommendation from all this is that, first, you read the attached
paper (and I would welcome feedback on this) and the three
above-mentioned Dai et al. paper. Then, you might want to re-consider
what your strategy should be. In my view, I do not think we as a
community are at the stage where we can blindly develop paired no-policy
and stabilization scenarios and simply feed them into AOGCMs to see the
consequences. I believe that carefully constructed idealized scenarios
(perhaps based on what Morita is doing) will provide much more useful
information. You are already probably well aware of the need to do
ensemble runs, and I don't need to remind you how computationally
expensive this can be.
I hope these comments, and the papers, are useful. I'm sorry that it is
impossible for me to come to the Barbados meeting, but I am willing to
help in any way that I can.
Best wishes (and good luck), Tom.
********************************
Rob Swart wrote:
>
> Dear Sarah, Tom, Tsuneyuki, Martin, Mike and Tim,
>
> Back from holidays I found your email exchange. Let me first apologize
that
> I did not inform Sarah about this TGCIA action. I remembered from the
> IPCC-TGCIA meeting ? apparently wrongly - that Mike and/or Tim would
inform
> Sarah, as they would be in touch with her anyway (I did not even have
> Sarah's email address at the time). Let me also reiterate the reason for
> Tsuneyuki's invited proposal. In order to have comparable GCM results
> available and impact studies based on these results at the time of the
IPCC
> Fourth Assessment Report, and taking into account that GCM teams are
> unlikely to perform dozens of runs, the IPCC-TGCIA (chaired by Martin)
> intends to recommend a limited set of both baseline and stabilization
> scenarios for such runs. In this way, impact modellers in the coming
years
> could base their analysis on different runs from different GCMs for the
> same socio-economic scenario(s). Evidently, teams are free to run
whatever
> scenario they think interesting, but comparability would be preferable,
and
> many teams have proven responsive to IPCC-TGCIA recommendations in the
past
> as I understand it.
>
> The TGCIA has reached agreement on which 4 of the 40 SRES baseline
> scenarios would be most interesting (see meeting report: 4 scenarios
(A1FI,
> A2, B1 and B2) for 3 time periods 2020s, 2050s and 2080s). The next
> question was: since a (maybe "the") core policy question is what the
> benefits (or avoided impacts) would be of stabilizing GHG concentrations
at
> various levels, and since impact analysis should be based directly on GCM
> results rather than on results from simple climate models/IA models, it
> would be useful to also recommend a limited set of stabilization cases.
To
> make this a sensible effort, all the cases would have to be
distinguishable
> from one another from a GCM viewpoint. This may allow for combining
various
> scenarios which may be very different socio-economically, but would give
> very similar climate results for this century, such as the B1 and 550,
and
> the 650 and B2 cases. The stabilization cases would be selected from the
> following table, of which the cells contain available (post-SRES)
scenario
> runs:
> |-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------|
> |             |450 ppm      |550 ppm      |650 ppm      |750 ppm      |
> |-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------|
> |A1T          |             |             |             |             |
> |-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------|
> |A1B          |             |             |             |             |
> |-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------|
> |A1FI         |             |             |             |             |
> |-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------|
> |A2           |             |             |             |             |
> |-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------|
> |B1           |             |             |             |             |
> |-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------|
> |B2           |             |             |             |             |
> |-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------|
>
> It was suggested to select 2-4 cases from the more than 70 scenarios runs
> in the post-SRES programme co-ordinated by Tsuneyuki. Tom, it may well be
> that your "post-WRE"  work serves the same purpose, but the rationale for
> selecting post-SRES cases would be: consistency with the SRES narratives
> and numbers of the IPCC, and the much-acclaimed multi-model
characteristics
> of the (post-)SRES work. To downsize the 70-odd cases to 2-4 cases and
not
> burden Sarah too much, it was suggested to have one model (MAGICC) run a
> subset of some 10-15 cases which seemed to make sense. Please also note
> that not all 70-odd cases are useable, either because they do not have
all
> relevant GHG gases, or there have been questions about the
> consistency/quality of their assumptions, e.g.  a correct simulation of
the
> SRES base case by teams participating in post-SRES but not in SRES
(right,
> Tsuneyuki?). More importantly, Tsuneyuki used his intimate knowledge of
all
> cases and their distribution over base cases and stabilization levels to
> recommend 13 cases. This selection was discussed with me and Naki during
a
> brief meeting in Washington in June and seemed to be a very appropriate
> one.
>
> I noted the remark by Sarah that mean climate change results would be
> rather be model-independent (for a given climate sensitivity), while
> Tsuneyuki notes the large differences in the post-SRES work. These
> differences may not have to do with different approaches with respect to
> the carbon cycle or radiative forcing calculations, but rather with the
> freedom modellers had (or rather: took) in selecting the time path
(beyond
> 2100) towards stabilization/time horizon, and the changes in emissions of
> non-CO2 GHG in the stabilization analyses which focused primarily on CO2
> stabilization. This would need to be clarified in detail for the runs to
be
> selected, and I suggest that only those runs are further used for which
the
> authors provide sufficient information on these issues.
>
> Concluding, I would like to ask  Sarah, if she would be willing to take
the
> material provided by Tsuneyuki and perform the required calculations for
> the 13 cases (radiative forcing, global mean temperature and sea level
> rise, right, Mike/Tim?) within the next 1-2 months. The results would be
> discussed electronically in a small group (the addressees of this
message)
> in October/November and a preliminary proposal based on these discussions
> would be the input for a discussion on this issue during the next TGCIA
> meeting in Barbados, in November. Tom's recent work may be useful for
this
> discussion as well, and I wonder if the mentioned (draft) papers could be
> distributed to this group or even the full TGCIA.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Rob
>
> Dr. Rob Swart
> Head, Technical Support Unit
> Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III: Mitigation
> P.O. Box 1
> 3720 BA Bilthoven
> Netherlands
> tel. 31-30-2743026
> fax. 31-30-2744464
> email: rob.swart@rivm.nl
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Klaus,
A few belated comments on your 1st draft ...... which is looking promising:
a. we need to be careful about using concepts/terms such as 'unacceptable' global warming.
As I think Richard Tol says, we do not have any sound basis for determining what
constitutes 'dangerous' climate change.  Is it one life lost?  a nation-state inundated?
or some more utilitarian exceedance of a benefit/cost ratio?  Does every citizen on the
planet have a vote or just each government?  We should draw attention to the rather flimsy
basis upon which notions of safe or dangerous, tolerable or unacceptable climate change are
debated.  In the end of course there are lots of things we may view as 'unacceptable' (war
for example), yet they happen and we survive.  I think this is an area rich for research
and we could draw out some of the dimensions.
b. later on you use the idea of balancing abatements costs vs. the risks of climate
change.  I think we need to use the language of risk here and to draw upon insights
developed by risk analysts (academic and professionals) about how we frame the climate
change problem in risk terms.  The differential perceptions of risks, inc. climate ones,
therefore becomes central in addressing point a.
c. the proposed ECF project on changes in extreme weather is of course a necessary first
step towards the quantification of climate risks.  This should be one of the justifications
for work in this area.  It is also the case that better understanding of these changes will
yield insights into how adaptation does or should proceed, at both environmental systems
and institutional systems levels.
d. re. nuclear energy in a climate protection portfolio, the ECF should be bold and should
question and expose assumptions made on both sides of the debate about the up and
down-sides of this technology.  It is rising higher on the UK agenda and there will be some
challenging times ahead in this country about its rightful place and role.
I look forward to seeing the second draft,
Mike
At 14:24 11/08/01 +0200, Klaus Hasselmann wrote:
Dear colleague:
I was requested on the 6.August telephone conference by the ECF skeleton board and the
members of the former ECF steering committe to coordinate the writing of an ECF position
paper, as agreed upon at the ECF meeting in Brussels on July 12.
It was proposed that we complete the position paper and present it to the press about a
week in advance of the Marrakech COP 7 meeting in November this year.
I suggest the following timetable:
1) preliminary agreement on the structure and contents of the paper by the end of this
month,
2) production of first draft in September,
3) detailed discussion of first draft on 2nd October in Potsdam (an additional day ahead
of the 3-4.October ECF meeting, which was proposed on 6.August to discuss the details of
the various projects agreed upon at the Brussels meeting)
4) completion of the paper in October.
5) November: presentation of the paper
I would hope that apart from the 2nd October meeting we can achieve our task by e-mail.
But a meeting may be necessary in September. If so, we should try to combine it with one
of the other project meetings that will be taking place in September.
Everybody is invited to participate. Please feel free to copy this mail to other ECF
members or potential members who I may have missed.
It has been suggested that the position paper should be short, about 5 pages, plus some
appendices if necessary.To get the discussion going, I propose the attached structure as
straw man. Please note that many of  the points I have listed are my own views, and I
will by happy to - and expect to - modify them based on your responses.
With best regards
Klaus
Prof. Dr. Klaus Hasselmann
work: Max Planck Institute  of Meteorology,
Bundestrasse 55, D21046 Hamburg, Germany
Tel. (+49) (0)40-41173-237 Fax. (+49) (0)40-41173-250
home: Schulstr. 79, D 25368 Kiebitzreihe
Tel. (+49) (0)4121-508849,  Fax. (+49) (0)4121-508850
e-mail: klaus.hasselmann@dkrz.de


Hi Ed,
Just to reiterate one more key point---Superimposing the two series and
their uncertainties is not the whole story (although it is a definite
improvement over just showing the two reconstructions on top of each other
w/ know assessment of uncertainty). However, doing the above still only
poses the question:
apple +/- [uncertainty in apple]  =?  orange +/- [uncertainty in orange]
As we discussed in a previous email exchange (based on the correlations you
calculated between instrumental series w/ the trend removed) ,  the two
reconstructions should probably only share about 60% or so variance in
common in the best case scenario, where there is no uncertainty at all,
owing simply to the differing target regions/season...
So we need to be very careful w/ the following statement which you made in
your previous email:
"If so, this would not mean that the series are not significantly different
from each
other. One can't dismiss the highly systematic differences at
multi-centennial timescales quite so easily."
I'm not sure you can justify that statement based on sound statistical
reasoning!
I agree w/ your following statement "Why these differences are there is the
crux question."
However,I hope the discussion will accurately reflect the fact that the
leading hypotheses to be rejected in answering that question are 1) random
uncertainty in the two series owing to differing data quality and sampling,
etc. can explain the difference  and 2)  systematic differences owing to
differing target region and seasonality can explain any residual
differences after (1).
That may be a tough standard to beat, but it *is* the approach that Tom,
Phil, Keith, and I have all been taking in addressing the issue of whether
our different reconstructions are or are not inconsistent and the
conclusion has in general been (see e.g. IPCC which was really a consensus
of many of us, though admittedly only I was a lead author) that, despite
notable differences in the low-frequency variability, the different
reconstructions probably cannot be considered inconsistent given the
uncertainties and differences in seasonality/spatial sampling. I have a
hard time understanding why the same standard should not be applied to
comparisons w/ your current reconstruction?
Does your RCS reconstruction really not fall in the mix of all the other
reconstructions? Is it truly an outlier w/ respect to Phil's, Tom's, MBH,
and other existing N. hem reconstructions that are based on different
seasonality and regional sampling???
We've probably had enough discussion now on this point, so I'll leave it to
you to discuss the results in the way you see most fit, but I really hope
you take the above points into account, in fairness to the previous work...
I look forward to seeing the final manuscript in one form or another, in
any case,
cheers,
mike
At 08:10 AM 9/10/01 -0400, Ed Cook wrote:
>I do intend to put in a new Fig. 5 that will compare the mean RCS with MBH,
>including each series' confidence limits. This will be done on low-pass
>filtered data (probably 40 year because of what Mike has sent me). I am
>sure that there will be significant overlap of confidence limits,
>especially prior to AD 1600, when they are quite wide in MBH. If so, this
>would not mean that the series are not significantly different from each
>other. One can't dismiss the highly systematic differences at
>multi-centennial timescales quite so easily. Why these differences are
>there is the crux question.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Ed
>
> >Dear Ed and Jan,
> >I have a couple of general comments, and then some specific little things
> >that
> >may be helpful. It is possible that some of the answers to my questions
> >may be
> >in the two manuscripts in review or in press (TRR and Dendrochronologia) to
> >which you refer.
> >       It seems that your results are consistent with the general shape and
> >some of the detail of the MBH99 series, apart from departures before 1200
> >and in
> >the 19th century. As the two datasets are largely, but not completely,
> >independent, this is an important result. At the time when your
> >replication is
> >weakest, there appear to be differences between the linear and
> non-linear RCS
> >curves and the MBH series. Before about 1200 your dataset is dominated by
> >material from four sites, I think - Polar Urals, Mongolia, Quebec and the
> >Taimyr
> >Peninsula.  It therefore seems to me that it is important to make the
> >kinds of
> >direct graphical comparisons that Mike suggests of both your series and
> >the MBH
> >series (superimposed and with their confidence limits shown). Perhaps the
> >differences you note are not robust, and then there would seem to be little
> >reason to seek climatological explanations. I suggest that the graphical
> >comparison Mike suggests will be important since it should allow some
> >assessment
> >of the extent to which MBH and others have or have not underestimated
> >temperature in the AD 1000-1400 period, if your arguments hold up.
> >       I think that a reasonable reader would have some questions about this
> >particular application of the RCS approach. Maybe an expansion of the
> >footnote
> >might help. How does the determination of the form of the regional
> >standardization curve itself depend on replication within each sampled
> >population? Do we know that the regional standardization curve does not vary
> >with time?  Or, do we know that the regional standardization curve does
> >not vary
> >with climate on multicentennial timescales? If so, how? Is it not quite
> >possible
> >that the level of the part of the curve for, say, trees between ages 100
> >and 300
> >is set by climate in the early life of the tree, or that it is itself
> >directly
> >determined by contemporaneous temperatures? A number of these questions
> >occur to
> >me because I have been struggling with RCS in the Yakutia material I have
> >been
> >working on with Gene Vaganov. We have a very good situation for the
> >application
> >of the method, with a couple of hundred samples for which we have pith - no
> >estimate needed. Even so, the resulting chronology, once calibrated, gives
> >impossible temperatures in the early part of the millennium. They imply mean
> >early summer temperatures of up to 18 degrees Celsius, which, at 70 degrees
> >north would have led to massive ecological and geomorphological change.
> I can
> >find no evidence for this. I would not be at all surprised if an
> >examination of
> >the Taimyr material you used were to show the same thing. I say this
> >because I
> >know Mukhtar Nuarzbaev's RCS chronology from the Taimyr shows these very
> high
> >levels at precisely the same time as the Yakutia material. Perhaps Mukhtar
> >and I
> >are misapplying the RCS method - a real possibility at least as far as I am
> >concerned. Alternatively, there is some problem with RCS that we have yet to
> >identify.
> >We are all stuck with a more fundamental problem, which is that we have no
> >way
> >to calibrate multicentennial variations. You have used one method of
> >producing
> >chronologies with greater low frequency variability, one that has some very
> >appealing characteristics. There are other ways the same objective could be
> >reached, but we do not have a simple way to choose between them in most
> >cases. I
> >do think it would be interesting to compare the RCS for the Sierra Nevada
> >material you used, if it contains enough samples to do that, with the Great
> >Basin upper forest border network, as highgraded to only contain samples
> with
> >minimum segment length of 500 years, and very conservatively detrended.
> >
> >Here are some specific points:
> >In the penultimate line on page 2 you refer to 1,205 tree ring series
> from 14
> >locations. Some readers will for sure be confused by the word "series" in
> >this
> >case - how about "core samples" or "radii" or "trees"?
> >Page 3 - I need to check this, but I think the segment lengths in the
> >relevant
> >series in the MBH99 analyses are much longer than 400 years.
> >Page 5 - The differences of timing in high values between the linear and
> >non-linear chronologies are actually quite striking. I think if you and I
> >were
> >looking at a couple of subsamples from a single site we would put these
> >differences down to inadequate sample depth.
> >Page 6 - you talk about the two series (RCS and MBH) disagreeing strongly,
> >but
> >at the moment there is no basis available to the reader to see how strongly.
> >This comes back to Mike's suggestion of a direct graphical comparison with
> >confidence limits, etc.
> >
> >Hope this helps, Cheers, Malcolm
> >
>
>
>==================================
>Dr. Edward R. Cook
>Doherty Senior Scholar
>Tree-Ring Laboratory
>Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
>Palisades, New York 10964  USA
>Email:  drdendro@ldeo.columbia.edu
>Phone:  845-365-8618
>Fax:    845-365-8152
>==================================
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@virginia.edu   Phone: (434) 924-7770   FAX: (434) 982-2137


Dear Ed - Didn't Keith Briffa also come up with a more marked LIA
than MBH99 in his age-band work? If this turns out to be right, it
should eventually be easier to find the sources of the differences
between the reconstructions, just by virtue of there being not only
many more tree-ring data for that period, but also more other, data,
such as documentary. Cheers, Malcolm
Malcolm Hughes
Professor of Dendrochronology
Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
520-621-6470
fax 520-621-8229


Hi Keith,
You probably haven't seen the newest version, which has not yet been
submitted, but I CLEARLY state that several of the data sets/sites used in
the paper have been used before and I reference all of the relevant papers.
I never implied anywhere that this was the first successful use of RCS. I
also reference your Quat. Sci. Rev. paper and your Age Banding paper. I
also state in the concluding section that what has been shown is not new,
but it is somewhat novel (the separation of the data into RC curve classes
and the regionalization of the data on the scale described) and
informative. I stand by that completely. So, the version I am working on
covers (hopefully) some of your concerns/complaints. I will do my best to
be "fair" before I finally submit it. However, this is a Report to Science
(~2500 word limit), so I can't do the kind of review of the literature and
detailed discussiion of results that would be possible in more normal size
papers.
Sorry for sounding a bit testy here. I've been fielding a whole raft of
questions, comments, and criticisms from Mike Mann, Tom Crowley, and
Malcolm Hughes. Some of them useful, many of them tiresome or besides the
point. I never wanted to get involved in this quixotic game of producing
the next great NH temperature reconstruction because of the professional
politics and sensitivities involved. All I wanted to do was demonstate with
Jan that Broecker was wrong, something that you have obviously done a few
times before but in journals that Broecker and others don't follow closely
(I guess. I should also say that the amount of ignorance about tree rings
in the global change/paleo/modeling community is staggering given what has
been published. Like it or not, they simply don't read our papers.). In so
doing, it seemed reasonable to compare the RCS chronology against the
hockey stick because that is the series that Broecker was railing against.
That is why I didn't bother to compare the series against all the other
records produced by you, Phil, and others. Jan originally did that, but I
chose to restrict the comparison to tighten the focus of the paper. More
reference to your results is clearly justified, so maybe I was wrong here.
This all reinforces my determination to leave this NH/global temperature
reconstruction junk behind me once I get this paper submitted. It's not
worth the aggravation. However, the paper is something that I need to do
for Jan. And I still think it is a good paper.
Cheers,
Ed
>What I really mean is that you have written this paper implying that you
>are getting low-frequency NH temperatures out of tree-ring data for the
>first time- using the RCS. You set up this question then use a lot of data
>in your analysis and the RCS as though they have not been analysed like
>this before and then show you get more of a LIA than Mann ,   while
>ignoring the fact that I have already produced  calibrated summer
>temperature curves (in the Science Perspective piece) from RCS ring width
>data in Sweden , Urals , Taimyr   and (in the JGR paper) using banded
>density - which both show more low frequency than MBH. The real question is
>whether MBH use data in tropical and mid latitudes that supress what is
>really a high latitude summer signal in their northen predictors ? I just
>don't think you are being very fair here- despite how many times you cite
>me ( perhaps the citations should anyway reflect the useful contributions
>to a particular area even if they number more than a token couple)
>that's off my chest now
>cheers
>Keith
>
>--
>Professor Keith Briffa,
>Climatic Research Unit
>University of East Anglia
>Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
>
>Phone: +44-1603-593909
>Fax: +44-1603-507784
>
>
==================================
Dr. Edward R. Cook
Doherty Senior Scholar
Tree-Ring Laboratory
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, New York 10964  USA
Email:	drdendro@ldeo.columbia.edu
Phone:	845-365-8618
Fax:	845-365-8152
==================================


Ed
I still believe you are not showing sufficient comparisons with  series
besides the MBH ; necessary to demonstrate the true extent of "new" information in this
work. At the very least this needs to acknowledge that other (and other tree-ring-based )
series are out there , that use at least some of the data you employ , and use the RCS
method to process may of their constituent series - i.e. the Northern chronology series
shown in my QSR paper. What is similar and what is different in your series and this one?
You give the impression here that you are using the RCS and new data to demonstrate the
possibility of getting more low frequency signal from tree-ring data - but then you base
this on a comparison with MBH only. Surely what is needed here is to establish WHY MBH
don't get as much LIA for example . By not showing that other tree-ring data that have also
shown a LIA , and not exploring why MBH does not (despite using some of the same -and note
-already RCS standardised data) is perhaps confusing rather than clarifying the issue.
When we discussed this here, I also suggested the need to show  separate "north" and more
"south" curves ,separated in your data set, to try to get at least some handle on the
independent expression of the centennial trends in a region south of the over-exploited
northern network . At the very least it should be clearly stated that many of the site data
used here and in previous work (see our Science perspectives piece) are common and other
series already produce more low-frequency signal than is implied in MBH .
Sorry for this rushed comment but I wanted to get this point over as we had talked about it
before but you don't seem to have taken it on board.
cheers
Keith
At 02:51 PM 9/10/01 -0400, Ed Cook wrote:
Hi Mike et al.,
Okay, here is an overlay plot of MBH vs. RCS, with RCS scaled to the
1900-1977 period of MBH, and with 95% confidence limits. This has been done
for the 40-yr low-pass RCS data to be consistent with the low-pass MBH
series you sent me. The 95% confidence limits of the RCS are also scaled
appropriately. Since correlations with both instrumental and MBH are
O(0.95) after even 20-year smoothing because of the trend, the RCS limits
are effectively based on the bootstrap 95% limits of the 14 chronologies.
Assuming that the original RCS C.I.s are reasonably accurate (which I think
they are), what is apparent (to me anyway) is that the confidence limits of
MBH are uniformly narrower after AD 1600. Prior to that, they are
comparable to RCS back to ca. AD 1200 where RCS C.I.s get bigger. Of course
this is an odd comparison because the confidence limits are not derived the
same way. However, I do think that they are somewhat informative
nonetheless. What is also apparent is the much great amplitude of
variability in the RCS estimates. This is consistent with the understanding
that extratropical temperatures are more variable than tropical
tempertures, which supports the idea that the MBH record does have more
tropical temperature information in it. The other interesting thing about
expressing the RCS data this way and overlaying it on MBH is the appearance
that MBH is missing the LIA rather than the MWP, at least on
multi-centennial timescales. This turns some of Broecker's criticism of the
"hockey stick" on its head. I'm not sure where all this leads.
Any comments and further suggestions are welcome as long as they come in by
tomorrow. I am definately submitting the paper within a day or two.
Cheers,
Ed
==================================
Dr. Edward R. Cook
Doherty Senior Scholar
Tree-Ring Laboratory
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, New York 10964  USA
Email:  drdendro@ldeo.columbia.edu
Phone:  845-365-8618
Fax:    845-365-8152
==================================
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: +44-1603-593909
Fax: +44-1603-507784
[1]
References
1.
2.


Dear Keith,
below is the list of the Ekaterinburg team members with brief
description.
=========
Stepan G. Shiyatov, Prof., Dr., head of the Laboratory of
Dendrochronology, leader of Ekaterinburg team, took part in
collecting subfossil wood in the Yamal Peninsula, cross-dating
ring-width series, developing and analysing the multimillennial
ring-width chronology. He has also carried out the work on
evaluation of changes in composition and structure of
forest-tundra ecosystems in Polar Urals.
Rashit M. Hantemirov, Dr., took part in collecting subfossil wood
in the Yamal Peninsula, cross-dating ring-width series,
developing and analysing the multimillennial ring-width
chronology. He has also developed and analysed juniper chronology
in Polar Urals.
Valery S. Mazepa, Dr., took part in treatment of individual
ring-width series and analysing of the Yamal long chronology. He
has also carried out the work on estimating of changes in woody
biomass in Polar Urals.
Alexander Yu. Surkov, technician, took part in collecting,
preparing and measuring the subfossil wood from Yamal Peninsula
=========
Finances(Eu):
Labour Overhead travel/sub equipment consum other   total
12500    1250     7900       2950      400    0     25000
For any case - how many got each team member (Eu):
Shiyatov S.G.   4000
Mazepa V.S.     3800
Hantemirov R.M. 3700
Surkov A.Y.     1000
Best regards,
Stepan G. Shiyatov
Rashit M. Hantemirov
Lab. of Dendrochronology
Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology
8 Marta St., 202
Ekaterinburg, 620144, Russia
e-mail: rashit@ipae.uran.ru
Fax: +7 (3432) 29 41 61; phone: +7 (3432) 29 40 92


"
Dear Simon, Andy,
Many thanks for agreeing to each give an informal presentation to the Steering Committee
on the first afternoon of the meeting.
As I mentioned on the phone, what I'm after is for each of you to look at the Abrupt
proposal and Prescient proposal/draft-science plan (attached as WORD documents), stand
well back, and put forward some ideas for how one might combine them into a single
coherent programme.  The intention is to lay the foundation for some discussion, both
Monday afternoon and evening, in advance of the formal Steering Committee meeting item
that will deal with developing a single science plan. All SC members will have the
attached documents in their papers.
I'll summarise the few constraints we have at the start of the Monday session, so you
won't have to revisit the history; by the time we get to you, all will know that we have
the task of coming up with a single plan, and the events leading up to that
circumstance.
The constraints as I see them are:
The Rapid Climate Change programme has  a budget of £20m. The Abrupt proposal was
written to £16.9m, and the STB decided to invest £17.0m in thermohaline-related rapid
climate change. This proposal contained both palaeo and modelling components (as well as
modern observational/process work), and a strong complementarity and close working
relationship with Prescient was always envisaged by the writers. The Prescient proposal
was written to £8m, and the Prescient draft science plan (following reduced award) was
written to £4.5m. The STB did not have a discussion about how the science of the two
programmes should be combined, but the nature and chronology of events/discussions imply
that the STB decision to spend £17m on thermohaline-related work should be respected. I
do not see that this has to be translated as an inexorable shackling of the £4.5m
Prescient science aims, given that a good fraction of the Prescient draft science plan
seems to be potentially relevant to thermohaline-related climate change, and that there
is notionally £3m of the £20m that is not tied to thermohaline-related work, and there
is a strong palaeo/modelling element to Abrupt.
So much for constraints. I do not want to give the impression that we are after a
ring-fencing of Prescient and Abrupt monies and aims within Rapid.  I would hope that
there is scope for a much more integrated (in the sense of both palaeo/modern and
obs/model) and coherent programme than that. One potential conflict, in the modelling
context, seems to be the apparently regional approach of Abrupt cf the global approach
of Prescient. I suspect (but may be wrong) that there is a scientific debate to be had
as to whether an Atlantic-centric approach is sufficient to consider
thermohaline-related climate change over NW Europe, or whether a more global treatment
is required.
On practicalities, I've got you down for 20 minutes each, and have set aside half an
hour for discussion straight afterwards. Please let Catrin Yeomans (cvy@nerc.ac.uk)
know your audio-visual needs.
Get back to me if you need further clarification.
All the best,
Phil
Dr Philip Newton
Head of Marine Sciences Team
Science Programmes Directorate
Natural Environment Research Council
Polaris House
North Star Avenue
Swindon
SN2 1EU, UK.
Tel: +44 (0) 1793 411636
Fax: +44 (0) 1793 411545
E-mail: ppn@nerc.ac.uk
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: +44-1603-593909
Fax: +44-1603-507784
[1]
References
1.
2.


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At 00:03 12/12/01, you wrote:
Hi Tim and Phil,
I'm afraid I missed their deadline -- I'm presenting at the Royal Society
meeting on IPCC tomorrow, and that had to take priority.  If Simon is
interested enough to bend some rules quietly, I could certainly get him an
outline proposal by Friday, but if not, it'll have to wait until their next
call.  It's frustrating, but it can't be helped.  NERC just have too many
calls.  As Simon points out, the Tyndall Centre's style may be a more
top-down, regulatory approach anyway, and good luck to them.  Politically
negotiated emission targets may work, but I have to confess to having
doubts.  Perhaps I have spent too much time talking to Dick Lindzen to
believe in central planning any more.
Myles, by "Simon" do you mean Simon Shackley?  I don't think he'd be able to bend the rules
since the proposals have to go direct to the Tyndall Centre's administrator.  As you say,
they are being more directive (is that a word?) in what they want this time round, and
since your idea isn't central to what they think they want I doubt whether they'd be
prepared to bend the rules.  Hope the Roy Soc goes well - I hear they're charging 100 quid
to listen to you - a bargain!
Tim


Ed (and Jan)
Frankly I am a bit surprised at your and Jan's response to my letter.
I thought I had explained clearly what I was writing to Science and did only that. After
some not too little experience in reviewing for Science and Nature , I returned what I
considered to be a very positive response, one which I knew Science would interpret as a
call to publish important results. This is precisely what they have done and no more could
have been expected. As to the sentiments and opinions expressed , they are objective and ,
in my opinion still correct. They are to be interpreted as a request for re-thinking the
logic and rationale of the presentation. I do not see why they require more than some
re-phrasing. Though I will admit that they ask for some minor (entirely justifiable) work
to include the correlations with summer seasonal data. I simply would not like to see you
write a paper that puts out a confused message with regard to the global warming debate ,
leaving ambiguity as to your opinion on the validity of the Mann curve and implying that
your series is a annual record , when I do not believe that you think it is. To get Science
to consider a rewrite is surely what you would have hoped for , and satisfying my remarks ,
in small or large measure , will not be the determinant in getting this published. Indeed ,
it may well be that the tone of my letter could have convinced them that this was important
work that should be published ( though with some provisos) despite what other reviewers may
have thought. What did the other reviewers say?
If you think I was too negative then I am sorry that we don't agree entirely - but that at
least is the normal !
I would not like this affair to ruin my Christmas , as it surely will if it is the cause of
our falling out . As for your message Jan , I prefer to think you were trying to calm
troubled waters , though you seem peculiarly adept at doing the opposite where I am
concerned, I prefer to ignore the remark about "not wanting to let this curve into Science"
( a response might only injure the prospects of any further collaboration) but I will say
that it goes without saying that Ed can have his opinion , just as even I can have. I would
never consider myself stupid enough to imagine I could ever influence your response to
Science by anything other than reasoned argument. If this is not accepted then ,at least Ed
I am sure knows that,  I would not let this stand in the way of this paper.
Ed, I am sorry to hear about your condition and I do know how debilitating it is. Useless
as it is , you have all my sympathy and best wishes for a rapid recovery.
I am likely also guilty of short temper and extreme frustration at the moment because of
conflicts between family and work , both sides demanding more time and both being
increasingly ill served by me. Somewhere in the middle I feel increasingly suffocated of
late and in moments of sane reflection can see that much of the trouble could perhaps be
lessened if one had time to be more considered in ones actions - but the moments of quiet
reflection are invariably harder to find.
I am totally confident that after a day's rephrasing this paper can go back and be
publishable to my satisfaction  by Science. I am equally confident that this interchange
was a waste of yours and my time . To the extent that I am culpable , I am truly sorry.
Keith
At 09:23 AM 12/17/01 -0500, you wrote:
Hi Keith,
First, I need to apologize a bit for what I wrote to you. It was a bit over
the top and came out during some serious physical discomfort that I am
experiencing now from a bout of shingles(? I'll find out from the doctor
today). It is all rather painful and depressing. So while I still think
that we have very real differences of opinion on the paper, I would hope
that we can accept at least some of these differences as part of the
scientific debate process and not let it affect us negatively or personally.
Paul Krusic came by yesterday and brought with him several parcels from the
lab, including the paper from Science. The editor will not accept the paper
as submitted, but will consider it after revision. Obviously, this is as
good as we should have expected. I will do whatever I can to satisfy the
reviewers comments, including yours, but probably can not rewrite it in a
way that will satisfy all of your concerns. At that point, it will be up to
Science to decide how to proceed.
Regards,
Ed
==================================
Dr. Edward R. Cook
Doherty Senior Scholar
Tree-Ring Laboratory
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, New York 10964  USA
Email:  drdendro@ldeo.columbia.edu
Phone:  845-365-8618
Fax:    845-365-8152
==================================
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: +44-1603-593909
Fax: +44-1603-507784
[1]
References
1.
2.


Stepan
I have the form , but it is not clear . Where I think I sign (page 1 bottom. under
co-ordinator) it says I have to prove my identity in Brussels?
I will phone them to ask before sending the form back. Will Eugene need a similar
signature?
Keith
At 12:15 PM 1/21/02 +0500, you wrote:
Dear Keith,
As I realized, our team must receive from INTAS the final sum of 737
EURO. I can get these money via Ekaterinburg Branch of VNESHTORGBANK,
as we did earlier. I am sending to you "Payment request" for
this sum, and you, as the coordinator, must sign it and send to
Brussels. In that case I can receive money in Ekaterinburg.
Last two months I was very bisy writing many reports for our activity
in 2001. From that days I will begin to work with material obtained
from the Polar Urals, mainly cartographic and photographic ones.
WE intent to take part at PAGES meeting which will be in May in
Moscow.
I wish you, your family and colleaques the best in New Year.
Best Regards,
Stepan stepan@ipae.uran.ru
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: +44-1603-593909
Fax: +44-1603-507784
[1]
References
1.
2.


Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 13:48:13 +0000
To: "Jesse Smith"
From: Keith Briffa
Subject: Re: SCIENCE review
Dear Jesse
I am sorry for messing you about with this but I really am leading a complicated life at
the moment. I am attaching my comments on The Esper et al manuscript . You will see that
I think the work is genuinely interesting and potentially of wide significance. The
bottom line is that you should publish this but the way the authors have chosen to
present their results smacks of a lack of clarity of thought (and a lot of fudging!) . I
believe that they are more concerned with trying to temper their ideas so as not to
"offend" Mann et al. They choose to present their work as a  generalised demonstration
of how to process a tree-ring data set merely to argue against an unjustified remark
made by Broecker about tree-ring reconstructions in general. This simply devalues the
significance of their work as this refutation is out their in the literature already if
only Broecker bothered to check. By trying to skate around the real questions that
Broecker was implying - i.e.  is the methodology removing the true low-frequency
variance in the Mann et al curve and is the magnitude of the Medieval warmth understated
?  -  Esper et al are obscuring the real message of their results - namely  that Mann et
al do most likely loose the low frequency variance in their reconstruction and they may
very well be underestimating the Medieval warmth . To get at this the authors need to be
honest about what their data represent (probably summer and certainly not hemispheric
wide coverage ) and is this really that different from what Mann et al actually
represent (even though they believe their's is a mean annual Hemispheric record).
I think the authors present a too-simplistic discussion of their curve and then gloss
over these difficult but important issues.
So I really think they should be published , but they should think again about the
interpretation and message .
At 09:25 AM 11/27/01 -0500, you wrote:
Dear Keith,
No, it is not too late, so please send your review.  Thanks a million.
Sincerely,
Jesse
=======================
Dr. Jesse Smith
Associate Editor
----------------------------------------------
Science
1200 New York Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20005
USA
----------------------------------------------
(202) 326-6556
(202) 408-1256 (FAX)
hjsmith@aaas.org
=======================
>>> Keith Briffa
11/27/01 09:17AM >>>
Is it too late for this or should I send a review by tomorrow?
Keith
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: +44-1603-593909
Fax: +44-1603-507784
[1]
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: +44-1603-593909
Fax: +44-1603-507784
[2]
References
1.
2.
3.


I cut Hammer ref
I just thanked "ll those who provided data"
I was looking at Graybill & Shiyatov Fig 20.6, but you are right that the
warmest period was after 1160....though some argue the MWP extends into the
14th century....certainly it shows a cold 11th century.  So I'lll cut that
reference, as requested...
I leave it to you to contact Dave Fisher as I don't know what he sent
you...so get back to me asap
Ray
>for the melt record (l) use .
>
>2. "Intercomparison of....techniques", Fisher and others.1996. Nato
>ASI Vol 141, "Climate variations and forcingmechanisms of the last
>2000 yrs", Springer Verlag etc. pp 297-328.
>Can not track down yet where the low re one came from (can you ask Dave
>directly)
>Other points are ok
>Did you track down the Hammer ref (some European conference) ?
>Do you need list of acknowledgements yet? Should include
>Mike Salmon for drawing the figure
>and Fisher, Black, Luterbacher, presumably Johnsson ,Bianchi,Kegwin,
>van Engelen,Keith Barber and Darrel.Maddy, for the data I used.
>I am really pushed , sorry about brief reponse- honest.
>Keith
>
>
>At 10:46 PM 3/4/02 -0500, you wrote:
>>yes--they do show a MWp in shiyatov and graybill 1992--but i added briffa
>>2000, too.
>>i still need a response to my last email
>>ray
>>
>>
>>Raymond S. Bradley
>>Distinguished Professor and Head of Department
>>Department of Geosciences
>>University of Massachusetts
>>Amherst, MA 01003-5820
>>
>>Tel: 413-545-2120
>>Fax: 413-545-1200
>>Climate System Research Center: 413-545-0659
>>Climate System Research Center Web Page:
>>
>>Paleoclimatology Book Web Site (1999):
>>
>>
>
>--
>Professor Keith Briffa,
>Climatic Research Unit
>University of East Anglia
>Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
>
>Phone: +44-1603-593909
>Fax: +44-1603-507784
>
>
>
Raymond S. Bradley
Distinguished Professor and Head of Department
Department of Geosciences
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003-5820
Tel: 413-545-2120
Fax: 413-545-1200
Climate System Research Center: 413-545-0659
Climate System Research Center Web Page:
Paleoclimatology Book Web Site (1999):


Dear Ed,
I'm really sorry I couldn't be more supportive of the final version of the manuscript. I
fully expected to be able to be more positive in my assessment.  I was frankly very
disappointed when I saw the final version--it is overwhelmingly different from the version
you shared with us originally. Sadly, it seems to have suffered, and not benefited, from
the review process--a very odd scenario. I fault the reviewers as much (in fact more) that
I fault you for this. There are some really basic problems that they didn't seem to catch.
I hope neither you nor your co-authors take this personally.
I'm trying to be as diplomatic as I can be in my discussions w/ reporters, etc. but I
really wish you hadn't sprung this  on us w/ no warning of the dramatic changes that were
made. I'm forced to be somewhat critical, because the flaws in some of your conclusions
need to be pointed out, or they will be exploited by those w/ alterior motives. You
certainly must have foreseen this, as must have the reviewers. I'm very disappointed, very
disappointed indeed.
I'm sharing my comments w/ Keith, Phil, Tim, Tom, Ray, and Malcolm. I am resisting the
temptation to write a letter of response to Science, although my better judgement dictates
that I should...
Mike
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@virginia.edu   Phone: (434) 924-7770   FAX: (434) 982-2137
[1]
Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\treerings-comments.doc"
References
1.
2.


Keith and Tim,
Sadly, your piece on the Esper et al paper is more flawed than even the paper itself.
Ed, the AP release that appeared in the papers was even worse. Apparently you allowed
yourself to be quoted saying things that are inconsistent with what you told me you had
said.
You three all should have known better. Keith and Tim: Arguing you can scale the
relationship between full Northern Hemisphere and extratropical Northern Hemisphere is
*much* more problematic than even any of the seasonal issues you discuss, and this isn't
even touched on in your piece. The evidence of course continues to mount (e.g., Hendy et
al, Science, a couple weeks ago) that the tropical SST in the past centuries varied far
more less in past centuries. Hendy et al specifically point out that there is little
evidence of an LIA in the tropics in the data. The internal inconsistency here  is
remarkably ironic. The tropics play a very important part in our reconstruction, with half
of the surface temperature estimate coming from latitudes below 30N. You know this, and in
my opinion you have knowingly misrepresented our work in your piece.
This will be all be straightened out in due course. In the meantime, there is a lot of
damage control that needs to be done and, in my opinion, you've done a disservice to the
honest discussions we had all had in the past, because you've misrepresented the evidence.
Many of us are very concerned with how Science dropped the ball as far as the review
process on this paper was concerned.  This never should have been published in Science, for
the reason's I outlined before (and have attached for those of you who haven't seen them).
I have to wonder why the functioning of the review process broke down so overtly here,
Mike
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@virginia.edu   Phone: (434) 924-7770   FAX: (434) 982-2137
[1]
Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\treerings-comments1.doc"
References
1.
2.


Hi Mike and others,
I just read the AP release. As always, there is a bit of journalistic
license that was applied to interpreting what I said. The opening
statement in the release is utterly the  words of the reporter. Some of
the quotes are probably accurate, but of course do not include
qualifiers, etc. I also talked with this journo before talking with you and
would phrase things a bit more carefully now after hearing your
concerns. So, I am not deceiving you in what I told you over the phone. I
would not express things the same way as you in any case, because I
do think that we have some legitimate differences of opinion on some
issues, although I think we agree much more than we disagree. Be
that as it may, talking over the phone to journalists in a rapid-fire
manner is not the best way to convey ideas and information and I
would have re-phrased or re-expressed some of what was written if I
had seen it before it was released. This was not an option provided to
me.
I think that it is a bit harse to say that the paper should not have been
published. While I might wish to change some wording in the paper
and express things a bit differently knowing what I know now, I don't
think that the paper is fatally flawed, like you do. I should also point out
that I have received a number of emails from respected scientists in
global change research who do not appear to share your opinion. On
the other hand, I have also received a couple of emails from certified
nuts, which is what you are obviously most concerned about. I am not
happy with such people, but I have also been savaged by similar nuts
like John Daly in the past. So, I guess I can't win.
Finally, this whole global change debate totally sucks because it is so
politicized. It reminds me too much of the ugly acid rain/forest decline
debate that I was caught in the middle of  years ago. I am quite happy
to leave global change to others in the future.
Ed
Original Message:
-----------------
From: Michael E. Mann mann@multiproxy.evsc.virginia.edu
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 12:39:38 -0500
To: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk, t.osborn@uea.ac.uk, p.jones@uea.ac.uk,
tcrowley@duke.edu, rbradley@geo.umass.edu,
mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu, drdendro@ldeo.columbia.edu,
rkerr@aaas.org, bhanson@aaas.org
Subject: Briffa & Osborn piece
Keith and Tim,
Sadly, your piece on the Esper et al paper is more flawed than even the
paper itself.
Ed, the AP release that appeared in the papers was even worse.
Apparently
you allowed yourself to be quoted saying things that are inconsistent
with
what you told me you had said.
You three all should have known better. Keith and Tim: Arguing you can
scale the relationship between full Northern Hemisphere and
extratropical
Northern Hemisphere is *much* more problematic than even any of the
seasonal issues you discuss, and this isn't even touched on in your
piece.
The evidence of course continues to mount (e.g., Hendy et al, Science,
a
couple weeks ago) that the tropical SST in the past centuries varied far
more less in past centuries. Hendy et al specifically point out that there
is little evidence of an LIA in the tropics in the data. The internal
inconsistency here  is remarkably ironic. The tropics play a very
important
part in our reconstruction, with half of the surface temperature estimate
coming from latitudes below 30N. You know this, and in my opinion you
have
knowingly misrepresented our work in your piece.
This will be all be straightened out in due course. In the meantime,
there
is a lot of damage control that needs to be done and, in my opinion,
you've
done a disservice to the honest discussions we had all had in the past,
because you've misrepresented the evidence. Many of us are very
concerned
with how Science dropped the ball as far as the review process on this
paper was concerned.  This never should have been published in
Science, for
the reason's I outlined before (and have attached for those of you who
haven't seen them). I have to wonder why the functioning of the review
process broke down so overtly here,
Mike
_______________________________________________________
________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________
________________
e-mail: mann@virginia.edu   Phone: (434) 924-7770   FAX: (434)
982-2137

--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
 .


Ed:
I just waded through all the correspondence with Mike re the Science paper
and Keef's commentary.  I wish to disassociate myself with Mike's comments,
or at least the tone of them.  I do not consider myself the final arbiter
of what Science should publish, nor do I consider what you did to signify
the end of civilization as we know it.  Life goes on--now we have another
working hypothesis to examine.  Great...one of these days we'll really know
what happened....until then, I find all these efforts to be really
interesting.  That's not to say I agree with everything you said or did,
but then I don't suppose you are too enamoured of what I've done in the
past either.  C'est la vie.
Ray
Raymond S. Bradley
Distinguished Professor and Head of Department
Department of Geosciences
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003-5820
Tel: 413-545-2120
Fax: 413-545-1200
Climate System Research Center: 413-545-0659
Climate System Research Center Web Page:
Paleoclimatology Book Web Site (1999):


Dear Mike, (and interested colleagues)
Given the list of people to whom you have chosen to circulate your message(s), we thought
we should make a short, somewhat formal, response here.  I am happy to reserve my informal
response until we are face to face! We did not respond earlier because we had more pressing
tasks to deal with. This is not the place to go into a long or over-detailed response to
all of your comments but a few brief remarks might help to clear up a couple of
misconceptions.
You consider our commentary on Ed and Jan's paper
"more flawed than even the paper itself"
on the basis that scaling the relationship between full Northern Hemisphere and
extratropical Northern Hemisphere is *much* more problematic than even any of the seasonal
issues we discuss.  In fact we did not do this.  The curve labelled Mann99 in our figure
was, in fact, based on the average of only the land areas, north of 20 degrees N, extracted
from your spatially-resolved reconstructions.  We then scaled it by calibration against the
instrumental annual temperatures from the same region.  This is, just as you stress in your
comments on the Esper et al. paper, what should have been done.  We think that this single
point addresses virtually of all your concerns.  We can, of course, argue about what this
means for the pre-1400 part of your reconstruction, when only 1 EOF was reconstructed, but
the essential message is that we did our best to exclude the tropics (and the oceans too!)
from your series so that it could more readily be compared with the other records.
The fact that we have used only the extra-tropical land from your data is not clear from
the text, so we can see why you may not have appreciated this, but we think you will
concede that this fact negates much of what you say and that we acted "more correctly" than
you realised.  Blame *Science* for being so mean with their space allocation if you want!
Remember that this was an unrefereed piece and we felt justified in concentrating on one
issue; that of the importance of the method of scaling and its effect on apparent
"absolute" reconstruction levels.  In our draft, we went on to say that this was crucial
for issues of simple model sensitivity studies and climate detection, citing the work of
Tom Crowley and Myles Allen, but this fell foul of the editor's knife.
You also express concerns about the calibration of Esper et al. (e.g., you say "if the
authors had instead used the actual (unsmoothed) instrumental record for the extratropical
northern hemisphere to scale their record, their reconstruction would be much closer to
MBH99").
This point is wholly consistent with our discussion in the perspective piece, and indeed we
show that in absolute terms the records are closer when Esper et al. is calibrated using
unsmoothed data  but since the variance is also reduced, the significance of the
differences may be just as high.
Finally, we have to say that we do not feel constrained in what we say to the media or
write in the scientific or popular press, by what the sceptics will say or do with our
results.  We can only strive to do our best and address the issues honestly.  Some
"sceptics" have their own dishonest agenda - we have no doubt of that.  If you believe that
I, or Tim, have any other objective but to be open and honest about the uncertainties in
the climate change debate, then I am disappointed in you also.
Best regards
Keith (and Tim)
At 12:39 PM 3/22/02 -0500, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Keith and Tim,
Sadly, your piece on the Esper et al paper is more flawed than even the paper itself.
Ed, the AP release that appeared in the papers was even worse. Apparently you allowed
yourself to be quoted saying things that are inconsistent with what you told me you had
said.
You three all should have known better. Keith and Tim: Arguing you can scale the
relationship between full Northern Hemisphere and extratropical Northern Hemisphere is
*much* more problematic than even any of the seasonal issues you discuss, and this isn't
even touched on in your piece. The evidence of course continues to mount (e.g., Hendy et
al, Science, a couple weeks ago) that the tropical SST in the past centuries varied far
more less in past centuries. Hendy et al specifically point out that there is little
evidence of an LIA in the tropics in the data. The internal inconsistency here  is
remarkably ironic. The tropics play a very important part in our reconstruction, with
half of the surface temperature estimate coming from latitudes below 30N. You know this,
and in my opinion you have knowingly misrepresented our work in your piece.
This will be all be straightened out in due course. In the meantime, there is a lot of
damage control that needs to be done and, in my opinion, you've done a disservice to the
honest discussions we had all had in the past, because you've misrepresented the
evidence. Many of us are very concerned with how Science dropped the ball as far as the
review process on this paper was concerned.  This never should have been published in
Science, for the reason's I outlined before (and have attached for those of you who
haven't seen them). I have to wonder why the functioning of the review process broke
down so overtly here,
Mike
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@virginia.edu   Phone: (434) 924-7770   FAX: (434) 982-2137
[1]
--
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: +44-1603-593909
Fax: +44-1603-507784
[2]
References
1.
2.
3.


Ed,
It will take some time to digest these comments, but my initial response is one of some
disappointment. I will resist the temptation to make the letter to Science available to the
others on this list, because of my fears of violating the embargo policy (I know examples
of where doing so has led to Science retracting a piece form publication). So thanks for
also resisting the temptation to do so...
But I must point out that the piece by Malcolm and me is  very similar in its content to
the letter of clarification that you and I originally crafted to send to Science some weeks
ago, before your co-author objected to your involvement!  If there is no objection on your
part, I'd be happy to send that to everyone, because it is not under consideration in
Science (a quite unfortunate development, as far as I'm concerned). The only real change
from that version is the discussion of the use of RCS. That is in large part Malcolm's
contribution, but I stand behind what Malcolm says. I think there are some real sins of
omission with regard to the use of RCS too, and it would be an oversight on our part now to
comment on these.
Finally, with regard to the scaling issues, let me simply attach a plot which speaks more
loudly than several pages possibly could The plot takes Epser et al (not smoothed, but the
annual values) and scales it against the full Northern Hemisphere instrumental record
1856-1990 annual mean record, and compares against the entire 20th century instrumental
record (1856-1999), as well as with MBH99 and its uncertainties.
Suppose that Esper et al is indeed representative of the full Northern Hemisphere annual
mean, as MBH99 purports to be. To the extent that differences emerge between the two in
assuming such a scaling, I interpret them as differences which exist due to the fact that
the extratropical Northern Hemisphere series and full Northern Hemisphere series likely did
not co-vary in the past the same way they co-vary in the 20th century (when both are driven
predominantly, in a relative sense, by  anthropogenic forcing, rather than natural forcing
and internal variability). What the plot shows is quite remarkable. Scaled in this way,
there is remarkably little difference between Esper et al and MBH99 in the first place (the
two reconstructions are largely within the error estimates of MBH99!)!, but moreover, where
they do differ, this could be explainable in terms of patterns of enhanced mid-latitude
continental response that were discussed, for example, in Shindell et al (2001) in Science
last December. So I think this plot says a lot. Its say that there are some statistically
significant differences, but certainly no grounds to use Esper et al to contradict MBH99 or
IPCC '2001 as, sadly, I believe at least one of the published pieces tacitly appears to
want to do.
It is shame that such a plot, which I think is a far more meaningful comparison of the two
records, was not shown in either Esper et al or the Briffa & Osborn commentary. I've always
given the group of you adequate opportunity for commentary on anything we're about to
publish in Nature or Science. I am saddened that many of my colleagues (and, I have always
liked to think friends) didn't affort me the same opportunity before this all erupted in
our face. It could have been easily avoided. But that's water under the bridge.
Finally, before any more back-and-forths on this, I want to make sure that everyone
involved understands that none of this was in any way ever meant to be personal, at least
not on my part (and if it ever has, at least on my part, seemed that way, than I offer my
apologies--it was never intended that way). This is completely about the "science". To the
extent that I (and/or others) feel that the science has been mis-represented in places,
however, I personally will work very hard to make sure that a more balanced view is
available to the community. Especially because the implications are so great in this case.
This is what I sought to do w/ the NYT piece and my NPR interview, and that is what I've
sought to do (and Malcolm to, as far as I'm concerned) with the letter to Science.  Being a
bit sloppy w/ wording, and omission, etc. is something we're all guilty of at times. But I
do consider it somewhat unforgivable when it is obvious how that sloppiness can be
exploited. And you all know exactly what I'm talking about!
So, in short, I think are some fundamental issues over which we're in disagreement, and
where those exist, I will not shy away from pointing them out. But I hope that is not
mis-interpreted as in any way personal.
I hope that suffices,
Mike
p.s. It seemed like an omission to not cc in Peck and Scott Rutherford on this exchange, so
I've done that. I hope nobody minds this addition...
At 10:57 AM 4/11/02 -0400, Edward Cook wrote:
Hi Mike and Malcolm,
I have received the letter that you sent to Science and will respond to it here first in
some detail and later in edited and condensed form in Science.  Since much of what you
comment and criticize on has been disseminated to a number of people in your (Mike's)
somewhat inflammatory earlier emails, I am also sending this lengthy reply out to
everyone on that same email list, save those at Science.  I hadn't responded in detail
before, but do so now because your criticisms will soon be in the public domain.
However, I am not attaching your letter to Science to this email since that is not yet
in the public domain.  It is up to you to send out your submitted letter to everyone if
you wish.
I must say at the beginning that some parts of your letter to Science are as "flawed" as
your claims about Esper et al. (hereafter ECS). The Briffa/Osborn perspectives piece
points out an important scaling issue that indeed needs further examination. However, to
claim as you do that they show that the ECS 40-year low-pass temperature reconstruction
is "flawed" begs the question:  "flawed" by how much? It is not at all clear that
scaling the annually resolved RCS chronology to annually resolved instrumental
temperatures first before smoothing is the correct way to do it. The ECS series was
never created to examine annual, or even decadal, time-scale temperature variability.
Rather, as was clearly indicated in the paper, it was created to show how one can
preserve multi-centennial climate variability in certain long tree-ring records, as a
refutation of Broecker's truly "flawed" essay.  As ECS showed in their paper (Table 1),
the high-frequency correlations with NH mean annual temperatures after 20-year high-pass
filtering is only 0.15. That result was expected and it makes no meaningful difference
if one uses only extra-tropical NH temperature data.  So, while the amplitude of the
temperature-scaled 40-year low-pass ECS series might be on the high end (but still
plausible given the gridded borehole temperature record shown in Briffa/Osborn), scaling
on the annually resolved data first would probably have the opposite effect of
excessively reducing the amplitude.  I am willing to accept an intermediate value, but
probably not low enough to satisfy you.  Really, the more important result from ECS is
the enhanced pattern of multi-centennial variability in the NH extra-tropics over the
past 1100 years.  We can argue about the amplitude later, but the enhanced
multi-centennial variability can not be easily dismissed.  I should also point out,
again, that you saw Fig. 3 in ECS BEFORE it was even submitted to Science and never
pointed out the putative scaling "flaw" to me at that time.
With regards to the issue of the late 20th century warming, the fact that I did not
include some reference to or plot of the up-to-date instrumental temperature data (cf.
Briffa/Osborn) is what I regard as a "sin of omission".  What I said was that the
estimated temperatures during the MWP in ECS "approached" those in the 20th century
portion of that record up to 1990.  I don't consider the use of "approached" as an
egregious overstatement.  But I do agree with you that I should have been a bit more
careful in my wording there. As you know, I have publicly stated that I never intended
to imply that the MWP was as warm as the late 20th century (e.g., my New York Times
interview).  However, it is a bit of overkill to state twice in the closing sentences of
the first two paragraphs of your letter that the ECS results do not refute the
unprecedented late 20th century warming.  I would suggest that once is enough.
ECS were also very clear about the extra-tropical nature of their data.  So, what you
say in your letter about the reduced amplitude in your series coming from the tropics,
while perhaps worth pointing out again, is beating a dead horse.  However, I must say
that the "sin of omission" in the Briffa/Osborn piece concerning the series shown in
their plot is a bit worrying.  As they say in the data file of series used in their plot
(and in Keith's April 5 email response to you), Briffa/Osborn only used your land
temperature estimates north of 20 degrees and recalibrated the mean of those estimates
to the same domain of land-only instrumental temperatures using the same calibration
period for all of the other non-borehole series in the same way.  I would have preferred
it if they had used your data north of 30N to make the comparisons a bit more
one-to-one.  However, I still think that their results are interesting.  In particular,
they reproduce much of the reduced multi-centennial temperature variability seen in your
complete NH reconstruction.  So, if the amplitude of scaled ECS multi-centennial
variability is far too high (as you would apparently suggest), it appears that it is
also too low in your estimates for the NH extra-tropics north of 20N.  I think that we
have to stop being so aggressive in defending our series and try to understand the
strengths and weaknesses of each in order to improve them.  That is the way that science
is supposed to work.
I must admit to being really irritated over the criticism of the ECS tree-ring data
standardized using the RCS method.  First of all, ECS acknowledged up front the
declining available data prior to 1200 and its possible effect on interpreting an MWP in
the mean record.  ECS also showed bootstrap confidence intervals for the mean of the RCS
chronologies and showed where the chronologies drop out. Even allowing for the reduction
in the number of represented sites before 1400 (ECS Fig. 2d), and the reduction in
overall sample size (ECS Fig. 2b), there is still some evidence for significantly above
average growth during two intervals that can be plausibly assigned to the MWP. Of course
we would like to have had all 14 series cover the past 1000-1200 years.  This doesn't
mean that we can't usefully examine the data in the more weakly replicated intervals.
In any case, the replication in the MWP of the ECS chronology is at least as good as in
other published tree-ring estimates of large-scale temperatures (e.g., NH
extra-tropical) covering the past 1000+ years. It also includes more long tree-ring
records from the NH temperate latitudes than ever before. So to state that "this is a
perilous basis for an estimate of temperature on such a large geographic scale" is
disingenuous, especially when it is unclear how many millennia-long series are
contributing the majority of the temperature information in the Mann/Bradley/Hughes
(MBH) reconstruction prior to AD 1400.  Let's be balanced here.
I basically agree with the closing paragraph of your letter.  The ECS record was NEVER
intended to refute MBH.  It was intended, first and foremost, to refute Broecker's essay
in Science that unfairly attacked tree rings.  To this extent, ECS succeeded very well.
The comparison of ECS with MBH was a logical thing to do given that it has been accepted
by the IPCC as the benchmark reconstruction of NH annual temperature variability and
change over the past millennium.  Several other papers have made similar comparisons
between MBH and other even more geographically restricted estimates of past
temperature.  So, I don't apologize in the slightest for doing so in ECS.  The
correlations in Table 2 between ECS and MBH were primarily intended to demonstrate the
probable large-scale, low-frequency temperature signal in ECS independent of explicitly
calibrating the individual RCS chronologies before aggregating them.  The results should
actually have pleased you because, for the 20-200 year band, ECS and MBH have
correlations of 0.60 to 0.68, depending on the period used.  Given that ECS is based on
a great deal of new data not used in MBH, this result validates to a reasonable degree
the temperature signal in MBH in the 20-200 year band over the past 1000 years.
Given the incendiary and sometimes quite rude emails that came out at the time when ECS
and Briffa/Osborn were published, I could also go into the whole complaint about how the
review process at Science was "flawed".  I will only say that this is a very dangerous
game to get into and complaints of this kind can easily cut both ways.  I will submit an
appropriately edited and condensed version of this reply to Science.
Regards,
Ed
--
=================================
Dr. Edward R. Cook
Doherty Senior Scholar
Tree-Ring Laboratory
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, New York  10964  USA
Phone: 1-845-365-8618
Fax:   1-845-365-8152
Email: drdendro@ldeo.columbia.edu
=================================
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@virginia.edu   Phone: (434) 924-7770   FAX: (434) 982-2137
[1]
Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\esper-scaledcompare1980.jpg"
References
1.
2.


Dear friends,
I am concerned about the the stressed tone of some of the words being
circulated lately.  Such difficulties not only hamper collegiality
(which I value greatly) but also the actual progress in our field.
I think you are all fine fellows and very good scientists and that it
is time to smoke the peace pipe on all this and put a temporary
moratorium on more email messages until tempers cool down a bit.
After this maybe we can discuss things somewhere where each party
comes to the meeting beforehand with a commitment to even-handed
discussion and give and take.
I hope I have not offended anyone in this message -- it is of course
a personal opinion.  Maybe it is an illusion or prejudice on my part,
but somehow I am not convinced that the "truth" is always worth
reaching if it is at the cost of damaged personal relationships....
Best wishes, Tom
--
Thomas J. Crowley
Nicholas Professor of Earth Systems Science
Dept. of Earth and Ocean Sciences
Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
Box 90227
103  Old Chem Building
Duke University
Durham, NC  27708
tcrowley@duke.edu
919-681-8228
919-684-5833  fax


Whoaah...Please don't put words in my mouth Keith, especially such inflamatory word!
I was not attributing the entirety of  "spin" here (which is of a pretty massive scale) to
you! And I said I think such "spin", where it has occurred, is EITHER sloppy OR
disingenuous. You chose to assume I was talking about you in specific, and that I was
attributing the latter rather than the former. My actual words don't bear this out. In the
case of the Briffa & Osborn piece,  I actually tend to believe that sloppiness was the main
problem. In other cases of "spin" (e.g., the skeptics web pages of Daly and his ilk) it is
most clearly disingenousnous...I don't equate you with Daly and those folks by any stretch
of the imagination. Hopefully, you know that I respect you quite a bit as a scientist! But
in this case, I think you were sloppy. And the sloppiness had a real cost...
And as to whether or not your statements about IPCC are fair (I didn't use the word
"disservice"!), I'll leave that to each to decide. But personally, I think they were
unfair, because they opened up IPCC to criticism that is not merited by what is actually
said or shown in the iPCC report. Other IPCC authors who have contacted me feel the same
way, and perhaps there may be an official response on the part of IPCC authors. I don't
know.
But I agree that any further discussion ought to take place in the peer-reviewed
literature,
Mike
At 05:09 PM 4/12/02 +0100, Keith Briffa wrote:
I agree with the sentiments expressed by Tom . However, in his latest message Mike
clearly says that our perspectives piece did the IPCC a disservice. He then accuses us
of spinning the ECS paper to say  that MBH is an underestimate of what it purports to be
and that we have been sloppy and disingenuous. Frankly this is too much to take . I am
not going to let this ruin my weekend so I wait until I have calmed down and find time
next week to write a response. In the meantime I just wanted to note that I disagree
with these comments. Perhaps the best place to continue this discussion is in the peer
review literature.
Keith
At 11:11 AM 4/12/02 -0400, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Ed and others,
I thought I too should chime in here one last time...
I'll leave it to you, Malcolm, Keith and others to debate out the issue of any
additional uncertainties, biases, etc. that might arise from RCS in the presence of
limited samples. That is beyond my range of expertise. But since this is a new and
relatively untested approach, and it is on the basis of this approach that other
estimates are being argued to be "underestimates", we would indeed have been remiss now
to point this out in our letter.
The wording "perilous" perhaps should be changed, by I very much stand by the overall
sentiment expressed by Malcolm in our piece with regard to RCS.
One very important additional point that Malcolm makes in his message is that
conservative estimates of uncertainties, appropriate additional caveats, etc. were
indeed all provided in MBH99, and I have always been careful to interpret our results in
the context of these uncertainties and caveats. IPCC '2001 was careful to do so to, and
based its conclusions within the context of the uncertainties (hence the choice of the
conservative term "likely" in describing the apparently unprecedented nature of late
20th century warmth) and, moreover, on the collective results of many independent
reconstructions. Briffa & Osborn would have you believe that IPCC '2001's conclusions in
this regard rested on MBH99 alone. Frankly, Keith and Tim, I believe that is unfair to
the IPCC, whether or not one cares about being fair to MBH or not.
What is unfortunate here then is that Esper et al has been "spun" i to argue that MBH99
underestimates the quantity it purports to estimate, full Northern Hemisphere annual
mean temperature. Given the readily acknowledged level of uncertainty in both estimates,
combined with the   "apples and oranges" nature of the comparison between the two (which
I have sought to clarify in my letter to Science, and in my messages to you all, and the
comparison plot I provided),   I believe it is either sloppy or disingenuous reasoning
to argue that this is the case. The fact that this sloppiness also readily serves the
interests of the skeptics is quite unfortunate, but it is indeed beside the point!
It would probably also be helpful for me to point out, without naming names, that many
of our most prominent colleagues in the climate research community, as well government
funding agency representatives,  have personally contacted me over the past few weeks to
express their dismay at the way they believe this study was spun. I won't get into the
blame game, because there's more than enough of that to go around. But when the leaders
of our scientific research community and our funding managers personally alert us that
they believe the credibility of our field has been damaged, I think it is time for some
serious reflection on this episode.
that's my final 2 cents,
Mike
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@virginia.edu   Phone: (434) 924-7770   FAX: (434) 982-2137
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