date: Mon Jan 19 11:34:01 2004
from: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: J. Climate reviews
to: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@virginia.edu>, Scott Rutherford <srutherford@rwu.edu>, Bradley Raymond <rbradley@geo.umass.edu>, Hughes Malcolm <mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu>, Jones Phil <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>, Briffa Keith <k.briffa@uea.ac.uk>, mann@virginia.edu

   Hi Scott and Mike,
   thanks for forwarding the reviews - and thanks, Mike, for proposing that you and Scott take
   the first stab at revising/responding.  In the meantime, here are some (random) comments:
   (1) Do not cite S&B03.  Justify this to the editor by citing the exchange in EOS -
   especially the second EOF piece, which I believe is more damming to them than the first!
   (2) For M&M03 it's a little harder, since their work relates directly to the MBH data set
   used here, and because a response is not yet in the peer-reviewed literature.  If your
   response is accepted by Climatic Change before the Rutherford et al. paper is revised, that
   will help.  Yet, as I understand it, the point you make in your response is not that the
   data "problems" pointed out by M&M03 are *all* incorrect/misleading (though some/many may
   be), but that the NH temperature results are *unaffected* by them, even if a few are indeed
   in error.  If so, might we need to correct the few errors that M&M03 did find, state that
   we have been done this in the paper, and then show the revised RegEM results (presumably
   almost as they are now?).  Please correct me if I'm wrong about M&M03, or if the work/time
   involved in re-running RegEM with very slightly revised multi-proxy input is prohibitive.
   (3) As Mike says, the 2nd review still needs to be dealt with, despite being rather
   unfocussed.  I would say that (in response to the final paragraph of reviewer B) that a
   detailed paper *is* necessary that dots the 'i's and crosses the 't's - not to re-inforce
   the conventional wisdom but to demonstrate that the "conventional wisdom" is relatively
   insensitive to methodological choices.  By the way, the Pauling et al. paper is from
   Andreas Pauling and others at Heinz Wanner's group rather than Hamburg.  The Pauling et al.
   paper does look at seasonality, but contributes little to the issue in my opinion.
   Nevertheless, we might cite it anyway, as a concession to the reviewer - while avoiding
   some of their other requests.
   I'll probably send more comments after I've talked with Keith and Phil (Phil is away at
   present).
   Cheers
   Tim
   At 20:07 16/01/2004, Michael E. Mann wrote:

     Dear All,
     The first review is insightful and helpful, the 2nd review provides relatively little
     insight. It promotes a number of myths, and plays gratuitous homage to the work of the
     Hamburg group (a hint as to where the reviewer might be from!). However, where
     reasonable points are raised by this reviewer, too they should be dealt with too.
     I don't think the paper can be split up, but it can probably be shortened a bit. I
     propose Scott and I take the first stab at revising and responding to reviewer comments,
     and then send it on to the others. Scott and I had discussed  plan to make the matlab
     codes and data used available in a website mentioned in the paper, to avoid any possible
     criticisms of availability. Is there any problem in posting the version of the MXD data
     set used publiclly (Tim, Keith?), and any other thoughts on this?
     Please feel free to send any comments, while Scott and I begin to work on the revised
     version...
     Thanks,
     mike
     I At 02:25 PM 1/16/2004 -0500, Scott Rutherford wrote:

     Dear All,
     Attached are the reviews from the Journal of Climate manuscript. One generally good, one
     generally weird.
     Scott
     ______________________________________________
                           Scott Rutherford
     Assistant Professor
     Dept. of Natural Sciences
     Roger Williams University
     e-mail: srutherford@rwu.edu
     phone: (401) 254-3208
     snail mail:
     One Ferry Road
     Bristol, RI 02809

     ______________________________________________________________
                         Professor Michael E. Mann
                Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
                           University of Virginia
                          Charlottesville, VA 22903
     _______________________________________________________________________
     e-mail: mann@virginia.edu   Phone: (434) 924-7770   FAX: (434) 982-2137
              [1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml

