cc: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@uea.ac.uk>
date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 13:49:57 +0000
from: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: EXTREMELY URGENT: SO&P report
to: philip.brohan@metoffice.gov.uk

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Hi Philip,

thanks for this input to the soap report.

Cheers

Tim

At 10:37 14/03/2006, you wrote:
>Hi Tim.
>
>  Another victory for EU bureaucracy. Here's what you asked for from us -
>let me know if you need anything else.
>
>We didn't encounter any unexpected difficulties, or change our plans.
>
>We've one extra non-peer reviewed report:
>Hadley Centre GMR milestone report III.A.3, "Evaluating simulated
>climate variability and climate response to forcings using the paleo
>reconstructions", September 2005.
>This will form part of Deliverable 14.
>
>We've worked on 2 workpackages
>
>Workpackage 4:
>
>We have presented some preliminary results of
>intercomparison between simulations and instrumental temperatures. We
>have taken account of observational uncertainty as well as chaotic
>climate variability in this analysis. We found that simulated Southern
>Hemisphere temperatures during the mid and early 20\th century were too
>warm compared to observations. An optimal detection analysis
>showed some discrepancy between simulation and HadCRUT3 though mainly
>in the response to natural forcings rather than in the response to
>well-mixed greenhouse gases.
>
>We have analysed the statistical methods used to reconstruct past
>temperatures from proxy data and shown that there are still considerable
>uncertainties in reconstructing past climate and to reduce these will
>require good estimates of proxy uncertainties. Even so, we have done
>comparisons between simulated and reconstructed temperatures, and our
>preliminary results suggest that HadCM3 has less multi-decadal
>variability than any of the paleo-reconstructions have.  This could be
>because HadCM3 lacks sufficient internal or chaotic multi-decadal
>variability, that the forcing used is too small on multi-decadal
>timescales or that HadCM3 is not sufficiently sensitive to the forcing
>applied.
>
>Workpackage 5
>
>We have completed the calculations and analysis of sea level changes
>based on the simulations of the last 500 years carried out using the
>HadCM3 AOGCM with anthropogenic and natural (solar and volcanic)
>forcings. Simulated contributions to global-mean sea-level rise during
>recent decades due to thermal expansion (the largest term) and to mass
>loss from glaciers and ice caps agree within uncertainties with
>observational estimates of these terms, but their sum falls short of the
>observed rate of sea level rise. This discrepancy has been found in
>previous studies; a completely satisfactory explanation of 20th-century
>sea-level rise is lacking. The model suggests that the apparent onset of
>sea level rise and glacier retreat during the first part of the 19th
>century was due to natural forcing. The rate of sea level rise was
>larger during the 20th century than during the previous centuries
>because of anthropogenic forcing, but decreasing natural forcing during
>the second half of the 20th century tended to offset the anthropogenic
>acceleration in the rate. Volcanic eruptions cause rapid falls in sea
>level, followed by recovery over several decades. The model shows
>substantially less decadal variability in sea level and its thermal
>expansion component than 20th-century observations indicate, either
>because it does not generate sufficient ocean internal variability, or
>because the observational analyses overestimate the variability.
>
>Regards,
>
>  Philip
>
>On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 10:56, Tim Osborn wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > we have had a very bad message from the CEC project officer who now
> > deals with SO&P (Riccardo Casale, who took over from Hans
> > Brelen).  See the exchange of emails below.
> >
> > The result is that a written scientific and management report is
> > required after all for the 3rd year of SO&P even though a final
> > report is also due in just a few months.
> >
> > Not only that, but he requires it by 16 March -- next Thursday!
> >
>---------- CUT --------------
>
>--
>Philip Brohan,  Climate Scientist
>Met Office   Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
>Tel: +44 (0)1392 884574    Fax: +44 (0)1392 885681
>Global climate data sets are available from http://www.hadobs.org

Dr Timothy J Osborn
Climatic Research Unit
School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
Norwich  NR4 7TJ, UK

e-mail:   t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
phone:    +44 1603 592089
fax:      +44 1603 507784
web:      http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/
sunclock: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm

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