date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 14:12:55 +0100
from: "Langenberg, Heike" <H.Langenberg@nature.com>
subject: RE: Nature: quick request for advice (S07368)
to: "'Tim Osborn'" <t.osborn@uea.ac.uk>

Thanks, Tim, that's very helpful. I'll reject the manuscript, based on your
comments and my own doubts, then. 

Cheers,
Heike

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Osborn [mailto:t.osborn@uea.ac.uk]
Sent: 22 July 2002 13:57
To: Langenberg, Heike
Subject: Re: Nature: quick request for advice (S07368)


Dear Heike,

a quick perusal and a consultation with my colleague (Prof. Keith Briffa) 
leads me to the firm conclusion that, while the paper has some new and 
publishable results, they have over-interpreted them along the lines that 
you suggested - probably to give them the feel of a wider and more 
significant appeal than they deserve.  Certainly the suggestion of a 
1000-yr oscillation on the basis of a 400-yr record is tenuous.  The timing 
of the beginning of the warming is of interest and the results have some 
novelty because there are not many equivalent ocean records, but with no 
assessment of the reconstruction error it is again difficult to accept the 
interpretation that the authors have given.

Best regards

Tim



At 12:12 22/07/02, you wrote:
>Dear Dr Osborn,
>
>  <<07368_ms.pdf>>
>I am writing to you in the hope that you may provide some informal advice
on
>a paper which has been recently submitted to Nature. This is just an
initial
>enquiry, so that we may try to assess the wider appeal of the paper, before
>me make a decision whether to send the paper out for a full review - please
>do not provide a full report at the present stage. The paper's title is
>
>" A Dansgaard/Oeschger climate cycle in the North Pacific during the
>  past millennium", by Lowell Stott and Donn Gorsline.
>
>Basically the authors present a record of oxygen and carbon isotopic
>compositions of a benthic foraminifer from the Santa Barbara and Santa
>Monica basins off California, covering the past 400 years. They find a
trend
>in delta 13 C, interpreted as a parallel to D/O events in the earlier
>record, and warming trend (from delta 18 O) over ~ the last 300 years, with
>some acceleration at about 1900. They conclude that the 20th century
warming
>trend is (at least to some extent) part of much longer-term trend, within a
>millenial scale oscillation. My concerns regarding the paper lie with the
>question of novelty, given that it seems that tree-ring records and
borehole
>data already seem to have come to the conclusions that the recent warming
>started before anthropogenic greenhouse gases accumulated in the atmosphere
>(e.g. Esper et al. in Science, and the work by Pollack). However, previous
>records seem to be mostly land-based and I am not sure how much we know
>about oceanic settings at this stage.
>
>Therefore, I was wondering if you could comment on the current state of
>affairs with respect to our understanding of climate evolution over the
past
>400 years, on land and in the ocean. Would this paper cause us to change
our
>view of  oceanic climate change? The authors also claim to have evidence
for
>a D/O event and millenial scale variability in their record, but I must say
>that I am rather skeptical about these inferences, given that the D/O event
>does not seem to be complete, and that a 400-year record would seem rather
>too short to infer millenial scale variability. I would, however,
>appreciate it if you could briefly comment on these aspects as well (if you
>feel that this also lies within your expertise).
>
>I have included a .pdf version of the manuscript with this email (readable
>with Adobe Acrobat Reader, available free via the Internet at
>http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html. ), to let you glance
>at the paper in more detail if you wish - often a general impression can be
>gained from the first papragraph - and I'd be grateful for any comment,
>short or long, you may be able give on this topic. Or if you are not able
to
>comment at this time, please could you give suggestions of other possible
>experts in the field.
>
>Thank you, and we appreciate any help you may be able to give.
>
>Yours sincerely,
>
>Heike Langenberg
>
>______________________________________________________
>Dr Heike Langenberg
>Senior Editor, Nature
>
>http://www.nature.com/nature
>The Nature Publishing Group
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Dr Timothy J Osborn                 | phone:    +44 1603 592089
Senior Research Associate           | fax:      +44 1603 507784
Climatic Research Unit              | e-mail:   t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
School of Environmental Sciences    | web-site:
University of East Anglia __________|   http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/
Norwich  NR4 7TJ         | sunclock:
UK                       |   http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm


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