cc: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@virginia.edu>, rbradley@geo.umass.edu,  jto@u.arizona.edu, storch@gkss.de, weber@knmi.nl, wanner@giub.unibe.ch,  tom crowley <tom@ocean.tamu.edu>, k.briffa@uea.ac.uk
date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 13:29:32 -0400
from: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@virginia.edu>
subject: Re: workshop report
to: Julia Cole <jcole@geo.arizona.edu>

   Dear Julie,
   Thanks for your comments. They are helpful, and well taken. I'm not sure we can accommodate
   significant discussion of *all* of the issues  you mention, because of limited space and a
   need to discuss a wide range of things. But we can certainly tweak the emphasis and
   reorganize the discussion as you recommend.
   Lets wait for the comments from the others. At that point, may I request (if you are
   willing) that you and Malcolm work on a revised draft that incorporates your comments,
   Malcolm's additions, and the concerns/suggestions expressed by the others, as you hinted
   you might be willing to do? I'll probably want to take one more crack at finalizing it
   after you are done, then we can send it out one last time to the group for final comments.
   Please let me know if you are amenable to this. Thanks,
   mike
   At 09:22 AM 6/15/01 -0700, Julia Cole wrote:

     Hi Mike,
     Just finished the draft report and overall, it looks like a great start. I want to make
     a few comments though, which I hope are not too odious to implement. Please let me know
     if you want actual rewriting from me.... I'm guessing you'll need to do it yourself to
     incorporate everyone's input, however.
     In general, I think shorter paragraphs would be better and I have tried to break these
     up in my comments. Remember that EOS columns are narrow, and a paragraph that is a half
     page here will be really long in EOS!
     In para 1, second line, I think you mean "natural variability of the modern and
     near-future climate"; obviously the natural variability of climate over all time scales
     exceeds that of the late Holocene. Where you cite Crowley, you might also want to cite a
     GCM-based analysis (Rind et al 1999 JGR, or Robertson et al. if Peck says its citable -
     these refs are below).
     More philosophically - the initial two paragraphs are focused on one way of looking at
     climate - the large-scale (hemispheric/global) reconstruction of temperature and
     explaining that variability. We spent a couple days of workshop on regional
     reconstruction targeting ENSO, NAO, hydrologic variability on different continents,
     etc., but that doesn't appear until several paragraphs later. Your "three distinct
     approaches" really needs to come under a later header of large-scale temperature
     reconstruction, and before this is introduced, the issue of regional reconstructions
     needs to be mentioned. You can break up the first two paras into shorter units if you do
     this. Can you create headers to break up the article?
     Begnning of third para - I think you might specify that you are referring again to
     discrepancies in large-scale T reconstructions...
     In third and fifth paragraphs, you seem to imply that borehole records are not
     "proxy-based" records. But borehole data are proxies for surface air temperature, are
     they not? I think this subtle distinction will be lost on many, which will obscure your
     meaning. Maybe better to distinguish "multiproxy", "tree-ring", and "borehole"
     reconstructions for more clarity.
     Final para: first, I think you can make this three paras with minimal rewriting - one on
     data gaps, one on need for low-res records, and one on validation. Third line - when you
     say database, it sound like we need better organization of the data we have - but what
     we really need I think is more and better data. We should state this more clearly in
     that sentence - you go on to say what's needed, so I think this is what you mean too.
     Third sentence - eliminate "(particularly the extratropics)" - it contradicts your first
     clause in that sentence; you can also eliminate "related" since what we need are proxies
     of ENSO variability. 4th sentence - "climatically key" for what? Lets just say "data
     sparse". Instead of "currently emphasized high resolution", how about just "annual".
     Later on, there's that borehole vs proxy distinction again that can be clarified.
     We did also identify the nineteenth century as an interesting interval for
     reconstruction - one that is uncontaminated by anthropogenic forcing, for the most part.
     That is nowhere in here. There are interesting changes in ENSO (Urban et al) and the NAO
     (Heinz and Jurg told me about this - perhaps it is in the NAO review paper) whose
     impacts would be really interesting to decipher.
     That's it for specific changes - I can see a few places where the number of words can be
     reduced w/o changing meaning, and if you want me to go through that later, I'd be happy
     to - but without getting everyone else's input first, it might be a waste of time to try
     it now.
     cheers, Julie
     Rind, D., J. Lean, and R. Healy, Simulated time-dependent climate response to solar
     radiative forcing since 1600, Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, 104 (D2),
     1973-1990, 1999.
     Robertson, A.D., J.T. Overpeck, D. Rind, and R. Healy, Simulated and observed climate
     variability of the last 500 years, Science, to be submitted June 2001, 2001.
     __________________________________
     Dr. Julia Cole
     Dept. of Geosciences
     Gould-Simpson Bldg.
     1040 E. 4th St.
     University of Arizona
     Tucson AZ   85721
     phone 520-626-2341
     fax 520-621-2672
     __________________________________
     </blockquote></x-html>

   _______________________________________________________________________
                       Professor Michael E. Mann
              Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
                         University of Virginia
                        Charlottesville, VA 22903
   _______________________________________________________________________
   e-mail: mann@virginia.edu   Phone: (804) 924-7770   FAX: (804) 982-2137
            [1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.[2]shtml

