cc: mann@virginia.edu
date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 08:25:24 -0500
from: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@virginia.edu>
subject: Re: J. Climate reviews
to: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@uea.ac.uk>, 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>

   Dear Tim,
   Thanks for your very thoughtful comments.
   I'm in full agreement w/ everything you say below, and had many of the same precise
   thoughts as I've begun to work through this and make preliminary revisions before sending
   on to Scott.
   I agree that SB03 doesn't deserve mention at all, and upon greater thought, that we do
   indeed need to discuss MM03 in proper context, and address the issues of purported errors
   in the dataset (there are no real errors, w/ one or two potential minor exceptions, as
   noted in your Climatic Change response). It will help *a lot* if the Clim. Chng paper is
   provisionally accepted before we finalize the J. Climate paper. I'm tentatively operating
   under this assumption, as I add some text on the issue. You as you say, Scott is already
   performing an experiment where the MBH98 network is only used through 1971, so that
   infilled proxy values (really, the only potentially legitimate complaint by MM03) are not
   used at all. Also, Scott is doing a "late verification" experiment to address the concerns
   of reviewer #1, and we're grudgingly going to calculate r^2 values for verification too
   (although I think we all agree that this is a very limited metric of reconstructive
   fidelity--but a concession to the reviewer, who is clearly trying to be helpful in his/her
   comments)...
   The Pauling et al paper is relevant where we discuss pseudoproxy experiments, etc. so I've
   added that reference as well as a Gonzalez-Rouco et al reference, and a few other relevant
   recently published refs (Jones et al JGR paper '03, Mann and Jones, GRL paper '03)...
   I'm finding that lots and lots of text of redundant or largely irrelevant text can be
   eliminated as we work through this, so we should be able to get it to an acceptable length
   (I think we can move Figure 2 to a "supplementary information" format to help out w/ length
   too).
   Hope to have something to send on to Scott shortly, then we can send to you guys, and
   everyone else can make comments, additional revisions, etc. I think we should be able to
   turn this around pretty quickly
   Thanks again for your quick response. More soon,
   mike
   At 11:34 AM 1/19/2004 +0000, Tim Osborn wrote:

     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

     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:      [2]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/
     sunclock: [3]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm

   ______________________________________________________________
                       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
            [4]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml

