From: "peter.thorne" <peter.thorne@metoffice.gov.uk>
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: CRUTEM4
Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 09:53:11 +0100

Phil,

I can't believe that people think it remotely reasonable behaviour to
send that sort of crud. They'd never say that to your face. I guess
their home is just that much more cosy and impersonal.

Cash would need spending in FY09/10 as I understand it, but someone for
six months (assuming they could start this Sept.) could be a route
forwards. It would be a good paper for them career-wise.

HadSST3 is in first draft form. I'm not sure what papers you assume will
arise. I think we were thinking of developing HadSST3 and CRUTEM4
seperately (but in a joined up way) and publishing as separate papers
and then doing a paper that covers combination to HadCRUT4 and perhaps,
for example, a d&a sensitivity to error model assumptions.

Peter

On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 09:43 +0100, Phil Jones wrote:
>   Peter,
>     Below is one of three emails I got last night following a new thread on CA.
>   I'll ignore them and wait for the FOI requests, which we have dealt 
> with before.
>   I did send an email to Thomas Stocker alerting him up to comment #17.
>   These are all about who changed what in various chapters of AR4. I 
> expect these
>   to get worse with AR5.
> 
>     Anyway back to the matter in hand.
> 
>     I'm planning to come down to see Ian Simpson (probably on June 
> 1). I'll get back
>   to David on this later today.
>      We've done some of what you aim for. We've sorted out the new Canadian
>   WMO numbers and have extra data for Australia and NZ in. Australia comes in
>   by email once a month. I'll have to find a new contact in NZ now 
> Jim Salinger has
>   been sacked - but it's only a small country. Iran is pretty good.
>      The US is the large bit of work. The US already has better 
> station density than
>   almost anywhere else, so the effort won't make much difference. But 
> it is probably
>   worth doing, as it would reduce errors - even if no-one understands 
> them. Glad
>   you got the poor paper to review!
>      Soon we will be adding data for the Greater Alpine Region (32 sites) which
>   go back to 1760. These data all have adjustments for screen issues prior to
>   about 1880. This makes summers cooler by about 0.4 deg C and winters about
>   the same. Similarly, we will also add a load of stations for Spain 
> (again with Screen
>   biases in). There is probably more we could add for European countries,
>   but again it is likely to make little difference, except to lower errors.
>      The real issue is South America and Africa. We have the whole 
> Argentine network,
>   but this is only digitized back to 1959 and the data we had wasn't 
> that bad anyway.
>   Problem in South America is Brazil.  Africa is OK in a few 
> countries, but poor in many.
>   We could add loads in China.
>     Issue with all this is that most of the additions wouldn't be 
> available from whenever
>   we stop. We can probably do the US in real time like Australia.
>     We've also been trying to add in the precip for many of these 
> extra stations (not
>   the Alpine countries and Spain).
>      There is a timing issue. As I understand HadSST3 won't be 
> available to be merged
>   with until it is successfully reviewed. So need to consider this as well.
> 
>     A final issue is people here. We're OK for most of 2010 for all. 
> We have a good
>   student finishing a PhD by Sept who wants to stay, so couldn't 
> really do anything
>   till then.
> 
>   Cheers
>   Phil
> 
> 
>      Dear Mr Jones
> 
> As a UK tax payer from the productive economy, could you please 
> explain why you restrict access to data sets that are gathered using 
> tax payer funds e.g. CRUTEM3. Can you believe how embarassing this is 
> to a UK TAX PAYER, putting up with your amateurish non disclosure of 
> enviromental information.
> 
> For reference http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5962 refers to your 
> absymal attitude to public data, although this is just the latest in 
> an embarassing set of reasonable requests from  CRU, who the hell do 
> you think you are? There will of course be an FOI on the back of this
> 
> Regards
> Ian
> 
> 
> At 08:54 12/05/2009, peter.thorne wrote:
> >Phil,
> >
> >there may be some money this FY, substantial sums. Management here are
> >casting around for ideas. As its to be spent this FY its largely going
> >to be consultant work as we never have a cats chance in hell of
> >recruiting on that timescale. What resource do you think we could
> >contract from CRU (you, Harry, others?) for doing a CRUTEM4 which I
> >would maintain had two aims ...
> >
> >1. Rescue and incorporation of recent data (I'm pinging NCDC too to see
> >what they could do vis-a-vis collating and sending the non-wmo US
> >stations and other data you may not have ... their bi-lats may have sig.
> >extra stations for Iran, Aus, Canada etc.)
> >
> >2. A more robust error model that led to production of a set of equi-
> >probable potential gridded products (HadSST3 will do simnilarly so we
> >could combine to form HadCRUT4 equi-probable). This error model
> >determination would ideally be modular so that we could assess how wrong
> >our assumptions about the error would have to be to "matter" and what
> >error sources are important for our ability to characterise the long-
> >term trend (trivially these will be the red noise I know but then most
> >people seem blind to the trivial sadly ...). The HadCRUT3 paper clearly
> >started well down that path but a recent paper I had the displeasure of
> >reviewing on my way back from WMO shows its poorly understood
> >(deliberately so in this particular case ...).
> >
> >We have a meeting Thursday. If it passes muster there we'll put it to
> >DECC and see what happens. No promises.
> >
> >This would mean we'd have HadCRUT4 which would be HadSST3 + CRUTEM4 each
> >with more data and better error models well before AR5 which seems
> >sensible ...
> >
> >Mr. Fraudit never goes away does he? How often has he been told that we
> >don't have permission? Ho hum. Oh, I heard that fraudit's Santer et al
> >comment got rejected. That'll brighten your day at least a teensy bit?
> >
> >Peter
> >--
> >Peter Thorne   Climate Research Scientist
> >Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, EX1 3PB
> >tel. +44 1392 886552 fax +44 1392 885681
> >www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs
> 
> 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 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                                 
> 
-- 
Peter Thorne   Climate Research Scientist
Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, EX1 3PB
tel. +44 1392 886552 fax +44 1392 885681
www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs

