From: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@meteo.psu.edu>, "raymond s. bradley" <rbradley@geo.umass.edu>
Subject: A couple of things
Date: Fri May  9 09:53:41 2008
Cc: "Caspar Ammann" <ammann@ucar.edu>

      Mike, Ray, Caspar,

          A couple of things - don't pass on either.
    1. Have seen you're RC bet. Not entirely sure this is the right way to go,
    but it will drum up some discussion.
     Anyway Mike and Caspar have seen me present possible problems with the
    SST data (in the 1940s/50s and since about 2000). The first of these will appear
    in Nature on May 29. There should be a News and Views item with this article
    by Dick Reynolds. The paper concludes by pointing out that SSTs now (or since
    about 2000, when the effect gets larger) are likely too low. This likely won't
    get corrected quickly as it really needs more overlap to increase confidence.
    Bottom line for me is that it appears SSTs now are about 0.1 deg C too cool
    globally. Issue is that the preponderance of drifters now (which measure SST
    better but between 0.1 and 0.2 lower than ships) mean anomalies are low
    relative to the ship-based 1961-90 base.
    This also means that the SST base the German modellers used in their runs
    was likely too warm by a similar amount. This applies to all modellers, reanalyses etc.
    There will be a lot of discussion of the global T series with people saying we can't
    even measure it properly now.
    The 1940s/50s problem with SSTs (the May 29 paper) also means there will be
    warmer SSTs for about 10 years. This will move the post-40s cooling to a little
    later - more in line with higher sulphate aerosol loading in the late 50s and 1960s70s.
    The paper doesn't provide a correction. This will come, but will include the addition
    of loads more British SSTs for WW2, which may very slightly cool the WW2 years.
    More British SST data have also been digitized for the late 1940s. Budget
    constraints mean that only about half the RN log books have been digitized. Emphasis
    has been given to the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean log books.
    As an aside, it is unfortunate that there are few in the Pacific. They have digitized
    all the logbooks of the ships journeys from the Indian Ocean south of Australia and NZ
    to Seattle for refits. Nice bit of history here - it turns out that most of the ships are
    US ones the UK got under the Churchill/Roosevelt deal in early 1940. All the RN bases
    in South Africa, India and Australia didn't have parts for these ships for a few years.
    So the German group would be stupid to take your bet.  There is a likely
    ongoing negative volcanic event in the offing!
    2. You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but
    this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith and Tim
    have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we've found a way
    around this.
    I can't wait for the Wengen review to come out with the Appendix showing what
    that 1990 IPCC Figure was really based on.
    The Garnaut review appears to be an Australian version of the Stern Report.
    This message will self destruct in 10 seconds!
    Cheers
    Phil

   Prof. Phil Jones
   Climatic Research Unit        Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
   School of Environmental Sciences    Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
   University of East Anglia
   Norwich                          Email    p.jones@uea.ac.uk
   NR4 7TJ
   UK
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