date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:19:42 +1300
from: "Glenn McGregor" <g.mcgregor@auckland.ac.nz>
subject: RE: JOC-08-0245 - Decision on Manuscript
to: <P.Jones@uea.ac.uk>

Phil

Thanks for the useful suggestion

Glad the UKCP09 meet went well

Glenn

-----Original Message-----
From: P.Jones@uea.ac.uk [mailto:P.Jones@uea.ac.uk] 
Sent: Wednesday, 14 January 2009 9:29 a.m.
To: Glenn McGregor
Subject: Re: JOC-08-0245 - Decision on Manuscript

 Glenn,
   Just got back from the UKCP09 meeting in Reading.
 WG reasonably well received. Really helps to have some
 results.
   Can I make one suggestion?  Good if the reviewer were
 a Brit - then they's know something about the context.

   Possibilities would be Rob Wilby and Nigel Arnell.

 Rob is now at Loughboro (has left the EA - back to academia).

 Nigel is now at Reading.

  We can easily add in a review og WGs.

 Cheers
 Phil

Phil
>
> Thanks for your response and willingness for me to get a third opinion.
>
> I will get onto this straight away as soon as I am back from walking the
> dog
>
> Best for the remaining period of work on UKCIP and your travels
>
> Glenn
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: P.Jones@uea.ac.uk <P.Jones@uea.ac.uk>
> To: Glenn McGregor
> Sent: Tue Jan 13 08:10:25 2009
> Subject: RE: JOC-08-0245 - Decision on Manuscript
>
>  Glenn,
>    At home now. I won't be able to do anything for a
>  few weeks, as we have to get the UKCP09 stuff done
>  and some travel, so it can't do any harm. So go ahead.
>
>   I do realize you can't read everything.
>
>   I suspect one of the reviewers may have been Semenov.
>  If so he is potentially biased, as his group didn't
>  win the tender for the work!
>
>    I don't think either reviewer realized the context of the work -
>  this may be my fault.
>
>  Cheers
>  Phil
>
>
>> Dear Phil
>>
>> Thanks for your response to the decision on the WG paper.
>>
>> I am willing to admit that I may have got it wrong as far as the
>> decision
>> goes but you must understand my position. As I am not able to read
>> every
>> paper in detail I have to resort to taking a decision based on the
>> reviews. In this case both were rather negative, hence my decision.
>>
>> Based on your response what I would like to do, with your permission,
>> is
>> to send the paper to a 3rd reviewer and request an opinion within 3
>> weeks.
>> If you would not like me to pursue this option then please let me know.
>>
>> Needless to say I am very conscious of the fact that you personally
>> have
>> given wonderful service to IJoC and I would hope that this incident
>> does
>> not damage the long term relationship you have with the journal.
>>
>> Best
>> Glenn
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: Phil Jones [mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk]
>> Sent: Tue 13/01/2009 01:25
>> To: Glenn McGregor
>> Cc: C G Kilsby
>> Subject: Re: JOC-08-0245 - Decision on Manuscript
>>
>>
>>
>>   Glenn,
>>      I'm afraid these two reviews will definitely
>> discourage me from submitting more papers
>>   to IJC!  The two reviewers have not realized
>> the novelty of this paper. The WG
>>   is fairly new and we are certainly not
>> re-inventing the wheel! We didn't do an
>>   in-depth literature review because of space. If you were still
>>   in the UK, you'd see this whole UKCIP08 package (now to be called
>> UKCP09)
>>   including this WG coming out in the spring time (April/May).
>>      To give you one example - all the papers referred to by the
>> reviewers
>> only
>>   work at sites with data. The WG in the paper works anywhere in the
>> UK.
>>      We've had the WG Report which will form part of the UKCP09 package
>>   formally reviewed very favourably by three experts in the field.
>>       You've missed a good paper for IJC here! Your reviewers have not
>> read it
>>   carefully enough - nor understood what it was about. Maybe the latter
>> is
>> my
>>   fault, attempting to explain too much in a
>> single paper, but I would have hoped
>>   for something more constructive.
>>
>>      You can ignore this email if you want. I won't be submitting this
>> paper
>>   to IJC again.
>>
>>      On the other paper of mine you rejected a couple of months ago,
>> I'm
>>   going to re-submit that somewhere else now. These reviews were
>> constructive,
>>   especially the positive one - that you chose to
>> ignore. At least the reviewers
>>   understood what the paper was about.
>>
>>   Cheers
>>   Phil
>>
>>
>> At 10:51 12/01/2009, you wrote:
>>>12-Jan-2009
>>>
>>>Dear Prof. Jones
>>>
>>>Manuscript # JOC-08-0245 entitled "Perturbing a
>>>Weather Generator using factors developed from
>>>Regional Climate Model simulations" which you
>>>submitted to the International Journal of
>>>Climatology, has been reviewed.  The comments of
>>>the referee(s), all of whom are leading
>>>international experts in this field, are
>>>included at the bottom of this letter. If the
>>>reviewer submitted comments as an attachment
>>>this will only be visible via your Author
>>>Centre. It will not be attached to this email.
>>>Log in to Manuscript Central, go to your Author
>>>Centre, find your manuscript in the "Manuscripts
>>>with Decisions" queue. Click on the Decision
>>>Letter link. Within the Decision letter is a
>>>further link to the reviewer attachment.
>>>
>>>In view of the comments of the referee(s) your
>>>manuscript has been denied publication in the
>>>International Journal of Climatology.
>>>
>>>Thank you for considering the International
>>>Journal of Climatology for the publication of
>>>your research.  I hope the outcome of this
>>>specific submission will not discourage you from submitting future
>>> manuscripts.
>>>
>>>Sincerely,
>>>
>>>Prof. Glenn McGregor
>>>Editor, International Journal of Climatology
>>>g.mcgregor@auckland.ac.nz
>>>
>>>NOTE FROM EDITOR
>>>I have taken the above decision as there appears
>>>to be a number of problems with the paper
>>>including a deficient review of the literature,
>>>few innovative aspects and a lack of analysis
>>>rigour. Sorry I could not be more positive.
>>>===========================
>>>
>>>Referee(s)' Comments to Author:
>>>
>>>Referee: 1
>>>Comments to the Author
>>>The paper describes how to link a weather
>>>generator, which was developed and published by
>>>the authors, with predictions from the regional
>>>climate model to provide end-users with daily
>>>climate scenarios for impact assessments as a
>>>part of the UKCIP08 project. This manuscript has major flaws.
>>>1. The problem of linking WG with the output of
>>>global or regional climate models (GCM/RegCM) to
>>>generate daily climate scenarios required by
>>>process-based impact models is not new. Wilks
>>>(1992) described the method of linking the WGEN
>>>weather generator based on a Markov chain model
>>>for precipitation with climate predictions
>>>derived from GCM. In Barrow et al (1996), a
>>>methodology of linking the LARS-WG weather
>>>generator based on series approach with HadCM2
>>>was described and used in the European project
>>>on the assessment of climate change on
>>>agriculture in Europe. From 2002, high
>>>resolution daily site-specific climate scenarios
>>>based on LARS-WG and HadRM3 (UKCIP02)
>>>predictions were available for the academic
>>>community to study impact of climate change in
>>>the UK (Semenov, 2007). A similar work has been
>>>done for the Met&Rol generator in Check Republic
>>>(Dubrovsky et al, 2004). None of this works has
>>>been cited, and their manuscript authors are trying to
>>> "rediscoverEthe
>>> wheel.
>>>
>>>2. The methodology of assessing the performance
>>>of WG is well established. Statistical tests are
>>>used to compare probability distributions of
>>>observed and simulated weather variables (e.g.
>>>the K-S test), the t-test and f-test are used to
>>>compare observed and simulated means and
>>>variances, the extreme values theory is used to
>>>assess how well WG reproduces weather extreme
>>>events (Semenov et al, 1998, Qian et al 2004,
>>>2008; Kesley et al, 2005; Semenov, 2008). In
>>>this paper, authors used a "visualEcomparison
>>>to compare observed and simulated means by
>>>plotting data points on a graph. This is
>>>unacceptable, because no objective conclusions
>>>can be derived from such comparison. Proper
>>>statistical tests must be used instead.
>>>I recommend to reject this manuscript, it is
>>>well below the standard acceptable in IJC or any
>>>other refereed journals. The manuscript did not
>>>contribute to the area of research, and the
>>>methodology used for comparison is "naiveEand
>>>unaccepted in scientific publications.
>>>==============================
>>>
>>>Referee: 2
>>>Comments to the Author
>>>All comments to the Author are found in the attached file.
>>
>> 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
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>


