cc: <jsmith@stratusconsulting.com>
date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 18:47:11 -0700
from: "Williams, Larry" <LJWILLIA@epri.com>
subject: FW: PAGES/CLIVAR workshop
to: <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>, <kull@pages.unibe.ch>, <k.briffa@uea.ac.uk>, <mann@psu.edu>, <wanner@giub.unibe.ch>, <kiefer@pages.unibe.ch>

   Gentlemen:



   It seems a happy coincidence has happened. With Joel Smith's help I have been searching for
   many months for a way support a workshop on climate variability. Armed with sufficient
   budget I have been somewhat surprised at the difficulty of finding scientific talent
   willing to take on this task. The main problem has been that there are two significant
   efforts going on in this area that have the experts fully engaged. Between the Fourth
   Assessment Report of the IPCC and the US Climate Change Science Program everyone who could
   contribute to this type of workshop seems to be fully loaded (burnt out?) and not very
   interested in yet another set of meetings.



   So when I read over the draft CLIVAR/PAGES Workshop 2006 I was very pleased to see an
   agenda that would fit our needs very well. The general scientific thrust outlined in your
   draft is right on target. The additional benefits from our point of view are:

     1. excellent scientific leadership

     2. excellent proposed attendees (I recognize many-not all-names on your list)

     3. workshop leading to peer-reviewed paper.

     4. cosponsorship by other funders-not just EPRI providing the budget



   The main additional features that I would like to propose would be:

     4. brief report on the workshop (cut and paste from the paper?) with an emphasis on
   creating a list of the most important researchable topics needed to advance the field. The
   main objective of this report and list would be to use it as a guide for EPRI  in funding
   follow-on research in this area. We can discuss this further at some later time.

     5. Acknowledgement of Electric Power Research Institute financial support in the paper
   and for the meeting.



   Let me give you a brief explanation of why we are interested in supporting your workshop.
   In the 90's we had a significant component of climate change science research that we
   initiated and supported. We had strong involvement with NCAR through our MECCA project, a
   major carbon cycle project (Carbon Cycle Model Linkage Project [CCMLP]-Colin Prentice,
   Martin Heiman, Fortunate Joos, and 6 teams of modelers from Europe and the US--see Section
   3.6 of TAR for CCMLP references), the US based ecosystem (VEMAP I and II) project, and many
   other worthy science research efforts. Financial difficulties for the US electric industry
   during this period eroded our science budget and these projects gradually came to an end.
   Things are looking better now and we want to get back in the business of supporting
   excellent climate change science research. This workshop could be an entry point for
   us to a new period of support for good science.



   Let me know if EPRI support for your workshop seems feasible from your point of view. If it
   does we can discuss the next steps on how to proceed.



   Best Regards,



      Larry Williams



   Larry Williams, Ph.D.
   Senior Technical Manager Global Climate
   Electric Power Research Institute
   Office: 650-855-2695
   Fax:     650-855-2950
   [1]ljwillia@epri.com







     ______________________________________________________________________________________

   From: Phil Jones [mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk]
   Sent: Wed 10/19/2005 8:13 AM
   To: Joel Smith
   Cc: Christoph Kull; Keith Briffa; Michael E. Mann; Heinz Wanner; Thorsten Kiefer
   Subject: Re: PAGES/CLIVAR workshop

   >  Joel,
          The workshop outline is attached. As I said on the phone, I'll be
     away tomorrow and Friday. PAGES have their support of 10K$ (US)
     for this and were hoping CLIVAR could match this. CLIVAR has
     come back and told us that their budget situation isn't good at the
     moment, and hope for better things later. At the moment
     we are wondering whether we will go ahead with a smaller
     workshop. These type of meetings need to be arranged some
     time in advance because of people's diaries and possible fieldwork
     commitments. The timing next June was to take advantage of
     another meeting in London, so we could get North Americans and
     others slightly cheaper. We also thought the Bernese Oberland in
     June would also tempt people, together with the excellent list of
     people we'd put together.
          Only the organizing committee (this email list) know of the meeting,
     as we've not approached the majority of the list to check availability.
        Email Christoph and the others if you're interested. I'm sure emphases
     can be changed somewhat, but the main thrust is model/data comparisons
     with respect to past variability. Emphasis would be on temperature, but
     we'd also look at variability of features such as ENSO, the NAO etc. We've
     all been to many meetings and know that numbers of 20-30 work best,
     along with lots of discussion and relatively few presentations.
     Best Regards
     Phil
   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
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