date: Thu Apr 24 15:42:36 2003
from: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: Can you provide a brief comment if not full review?
to: Keith Alverson <keith.alverson@pages.unibe.ch>

   Keith
   Sorry , I do have a recollection of quickly skimming this paper before and rapidly dumping
   it on a pile labelled "probably not worth the effort of giving a thorough review".
   Basically , I think the paper has little if anything to recommend publication. It adds
   little , except confusion , to the science.
   The main problem is a lack of focus and clear experimental design. The reducing sensitivity
   of tree growth to temperature forcing is unarguably a difficult and complex problem because
   the phenomenon is largely dependent on what trees/areas/variables/processing methods are
   used to make the comparison with "temperature". The temperature variable is itself a
   potentially ill-defined ( compromise in effect) choice . Briffa et al have published a
   specific manifestation of this phenomenon - based on one highly selective set of data , for
   which they describe the local and regional associations with one optimum "summer average "
   for density data and another for ring width. The present paper , by not adequately defining
   the rules upon which they based their regionalisation of the tree-ring data or the basis
   for specifying a particular temperature season(s) to be used in the comparisons , serves to
   confuse a number of potential factors that contribute to the possible time-dependence in
   the correlations they describe. The overriding criticism is that they examine  the regional
   tree ring series correlations with only the one ( Northern Hemisphere annual mean )
   temperature series. It is therefore not possible to know to what extent the results
   represent a shift in the association between that Hemisphere mean series and the regional
   climates of the areas represented by their regional chronologies. There are other problems
   (such as time-dependent changes in the structure of these chronologies, non-comparability
   in the simple correlations  because of the different lengths of period - it would be better
   to calculate significance levels over a moving window compatible in lengh to the short
   recent period(s) and test whether the reduced values are significant in the context of the
   longer records uncertainty estimates ) . Work has been published that documents  how
   temperatures averaged over different areas of the Hemisphere correlate with the Northern
   Hemisphere mean and the associations are subtlety time dependent and time-scale dependent
   and seasonally dependent . The association between Northern Sweden and The Hemisphere in
   summer is especially weak and one would not presumably base a reconstruction of the latter
   on only one Tornetresk series anyway as shown in 4. The paper  does not offer much because
   it needs to be very much reworked after considerable work - and the conclusions are pretty
   much hand waving anyway.
   I do not know whether this is sufficient but it does give my "overall" opinion.
   cheers
   Keith
   At 02:24 PM 4/23/03 +0200, you wrote:

     Hi Keith,
      I hope you have recovered from your back surgery well.  I am writing with
     regard to the sonenchkin paper submitted for a special issue of paleo3 that
     Olga Solomina and I are editing that I sent you asking for a review some
     time ago.
      The timeline for the issue is rapidly drawing to a close so I absolutely
     must send this back to the author with his reviews before the end of April.
     The paper deals with the recent decoupling of temperature and tree ring
     indicese in high latitude eurasia that you have pointed out in previous
     publications, so I feel it is rather key to have your thoughts. The other
     reviewer has provided a very thorough set of suggestions, so I don't really
     need a thorough review, but I would very much appreciate it if you could
     have a quick read of the paper and let me know your general thoughts, in
     particular if there are any glaring errors in it!  If you cannot find the
     time, please also let me know so I can find another option.
     Thanks in advance.
     Keith
     on 02/18/2003 11:56 AM, Keith Briffa,cru (Climatic Research Unit) at
     K.Briffa@uea.ac.uk wrote:
     > Unfortunately, I am forced to be away from the office for some weeks at least
     > during February and early March, having surgery on my back and undertaking a
     > period of recuperation.  If you are contacting me regarding outstanding review
     > requests or queries regarding the status of manuscripts submitted to The
     > Holocene, please note that I am dealing with these during my absence and I
     > will contact you directly.  If your request is of a different nature, I will
     > try to respond in due course, but you may prefer to try one of my colleagues
     > (see below).
     >
     >
     >
     > Questions with regard to our current research proposals should be directed to:
     >
     >
     >
     > Tim Osborn (t.osborn@uea.ac.uk) - SOAP or RAPID;
     >
     > Phil Jones (p.jones@uea.ac.uk) - HOLSMEER, ALP&#64979;IMP.
     >
     >
     >
     > Keith Briffa
     >
     > 29/1/03
     >
     --
     Keith Alverson
     Executive Director
     PAGES International Project Office
     Brenplatz 2, 3011 Bern, Switzerland
     [1]http://www.pages-igbp.org
     email: alverson@pages.unibe.ch
     Tel (office): +41 31 312 31 33
     Tel (direct): +41 31 312 31 54
     Mobile: (+41) 079 641 9220
     Fax: +41 31 312 31 68

   --
   Professor Keith Briffa,
   Climatic Research Unit
   University of East Anglia
   Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.

   Phone: +44-1603-593909
   Fax: +44-1603-507784
   [2]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[3]/

