date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:02:16 -0500
from: Thomas C Peterson <Thomas.C.Peterson@noaa.gov>
subject: Re: ETCCDI Workshop - Mexico 2009.
to: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>

   Hi, Phil,
       5M - that should do quite a bit in Mexico.  Glad to hear you're going to be attending
   the meeting.
       Bill's emails about the delay in his meeting seem sort of cryptic.  It sounds like a
   financial handshake problem between the World Bank and GCOS. But surely there must be other
   issues to cause this long of a delay.  The last I've heard is that it is still on but Bill
   doesn't know when.
       The story I've gotten about the Oct. CLIMAT is that we received two sets of CLIMAT
   messages from Russia.  The first had September's data in the October message.  The second
   had October's data in October's message.  When I was in charge of GHCN, we had a policy to
   always replace with the latest data as that should be the correct value. However, there
   were some problems with this, for example, when a country would transmit a correction to
   SLP and only transmit that - letting the rest of the fields just be set to missing.
   Apparently the system as it was working last month did not replace with more recent data so
   these September values stayed in the data set.  NASA was blameless as they just use GHCN.
   GHCN has been in serious need of maintenance and improvements (e.g., to incorporate all the
   CLIMAT messages, to account for changing station numbers, etc.) for quite some time. But
   instead of spending time and energy improving GHCN version 2, the plan was to create GHCN
   version 3 instead.  Unfortunately, GHCN version 3 has taken longer than anticipated.
                Regards,
                      Tom

   Phil Jones said the following on 12/2/2008 10:15 AM:

      Tom,
         Thanks for praising Jorge. I'll have to go to the meeting as it's being funded
      by the British Embassy in Mexico. The total for all the projects funded is 5M.
         Have you heard anything more about Bill's Kenyan meeting? The last I heard
      was a tentative date in October which was then delayed as they hadn't got the money
      from the World Bank. Maybe calling it the Horn of Africa is putting people off!
         Finally - do you know anything about the cock-up GISS made with the
      October CLIMAT's? They said it was NOAA's or NCDC's mistake. It seemed
      to me that it could have been Russia putting out the previous month's values again.
      Anyway - October 2008 was quite warm. We had it 5th warmest for the land only.
      With SST it went lower down.
        The skeptics and the right-wing media made a big thing about it. None of them
      seem to realize that the CLIMAT data (and the SYNOPs) all come in through the GTS!
      Cheers
      Phil
     At 15:23 01/12/2008, you wrote:

     This is great news, Jorge. Congratulations to everyone involved for getting support for
     it. The workshop should be a great step forward.
     Participation: I would be very interested in participating in this conference, but,
     alas, I only speak English and Fortran. So, while I am happy to consult with you on
     agendas, help with post workshop analyses, etc., I do not think my participation would
     be valuable enough to justify the travel expense. As one benefit of such workshops is
     establishing professional relationships between individuals at institutions that might
     value future collaboration, I think it would be helpful to have someone from the U.S.
     National Climatic Data Center participate.  The two best candidates I know are Ahira
     Sanchez-Lugo and Anthony Arguez. They both speak fluent Spanish. Ahira has an MS from
     the University of Hawaii and works in NCDC's Climate Monitoring Branch where she is
     currently processing global data and describing significant events.  Anthony has a Ph.D.
     from Florida State University and is currently developing Normals that would be more
     appropriate to use in a changing climate than just the average of the last 30 years.
     Last year he was the regional editor for the State of the Climate 2007 BAMS article.
     Please let me know if you'd like me to approach either or both of them about possibly
     participating in your workshop.
     Workshop focus: Nearly every workshop we've held has ended with a request for follow-on
     workshops. So while there has already been some analysis of extremes in Mexico by you,
     Manola and Enric, there are always benefits to holding an additional workshop.  However,
     I thought I might mention a variation on the theme which you might wish to consider.
     Attached is a short description of a GCOS - World Bank proposed series of workshops that
     Bill Westermeyer ([1]WWestermeyer@wmo.int) of the GCOS Office is organizing for the Horn
     of Africa which some of us are involved in.  Essentially the first of the series of 3
     workshops will attempt to combine the ETCCDI-type workshop with an analysis of how well
     models replicate the observed climate. This latter part is a building step to a future
     workshop that focuses on what the models project for the region which then contributes
     to an adaptation focused workshop. I think Bill's vision is great but challenging.
     Should it work well, it might lead to a whole new series of ETCCDI workshops with an
     expanded focus. As Bill's workshops haven't been held yet, I'm not in a position of
     being able to recommend it or not. But I did want to let you know about this possible
     variation on the theme in case you thought it might be helpful to add some regional
     modeling to your workshop. I'm sure Bill can provide you with more details.
     Good luck and please keep me posted on your progress.
     Regards,
            Tom
     [2]J.Vazquez-Aguirre@uea.ac.uk said the following on 11/26/2008 8:55 PM:

Dear ETCCDI Members and colleagues,

I hope all of you are doing well.

You are receiving this message because either a) you play an important
role in ETCCDI and we need to keep you informed of the activities below
described, or b) we need your support as a workshop instructor during
five
full-working days in Mexico next spring.  I might have already
talked to
some of you about this at some recent meetings (EMS, Amsterdam or AEC,
Tarragona). Anyway, here is the complete sequence of events:

Following the recent work from Peterson et al. (2008) about changes in
the
climate extremes of North America derived from daily data, we have
constantly been looking for support to complement the analysis in
Mexico.
After some time, a suitable grant has come up with for the purpose.

In August 2008, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was invited to advise
the
National Institute of Ecology of Mexico (INE) in submitting a research
proposal on `Climate Change Detection and Mitigation' to the Global
Opportunities Fund (GOF) of the British Embassy in Mexico. The proposal
was approved and I am pleased to inform you that early this month, the
Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) of the UK signed a grant for the
implementation of the project "Strenghtening Capacities for Climate
Change
Detection in Mexico".

It was agreed between INE and FCO that the project will be co-ordinated
by
the 'Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla (UIAP)' in Mexico. UIAP holds a
good reputation in the area of sustainable development. The project has
two main stages: the first one is devoted to the analysis of
instrumental
detection of climate change, here, a Workshop on Climate Extremes is
required; the second stage has to do with the promotion of sustainable
development and low carbon policies in Mexico.

The Workshop on Climate Extremes will be held in March 2009 in Puebla
City. For this activity, CRU has strongly reccomended to follow the
basic
structure of ETCDDI Workshops (Peterson 2005, WMO; Peterson and Manton,
2008, BAMS). Exploration in deep of ETCCDI's climate change indices for
Mexico will also be a core aspect of the research being done.

Therefore, on behalf of INE and UIAP, we are looking for ETCCDI experts
able to perform as Workshop instructors (about 4 or 5 people). Travel
and
accommodation expenses will be provided by the host institutions.
Considering that not all of the 32 expected attendants will be fully
qualified in English as a second language, INE and UIAP have requested,
if
possible, a workshop instruction provided in Spanish (although this is
not
a limitation if not enough ETCDDI members who speak Spanish are
available).

Would those of you interested in spending 5 days as an ETCCDI workshop
instructor in Mexico, please indicate your availability in the following
link?

[3]
http://www.doodle.com/ix9sasgdcs96ui83

Once the doodle entries are fairly completed (hopefully by next week),
UIAP and INE will decide on the most convenient schedule and the
participations will be formalized.

Please let us know if: 1) you are not interested in being a workshop
instructor but participating in the project in some other way (i.e.
providing guidance, materials, evaluating results, etc.);  2) you
think
your participation would be more suitable in the second stage of the
project (climate-related decision-making and applications). Any help you
might provide will be highly appreciated.

Thank you for your time. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any
comments, questions, hints or corrections you might have about this.

Kindly,

Jorge L. Vazquez
----------------
Posgraduate Researcher, PhD.
Climatic Research Unit,
University of East Anglia.
[4]
j.vazquez-aguirre@uea.ac.uk

==============================================

This message has been sent to the following recipients:

ETCCDI (Members, potential workshop instructors and advisers)
----------------------------------------------
Albert Klein Tank, KNMI. The Netherlands.
Phil D. Jones, CRU. United Kingdom.
Clare Goodess, CRU. United Kingdom.
Tom Peterson, NCDC. United States of America.
Xuebin Zhang, EC. Canada.
Manola Brunet, URV. Spain.
Enric Aguilar, URV. Spain.
Javier Sigr, URV. Spain.
Jorge L. Vazquez-Aguirre, CRU. United Kingdom.

Host Institutions in Mexico.
--------------------------------------------
Benjamn Ortiz Espejel, UIAP, Mexico.
Uriel Bando, INE, Mexico.
Julia Martnez, INE, Mexico.
Andres Flores, INE, Mexico.
Miguel Altamirano, INE, Mexico.
===============================




--
Thomas C. Peterson, Ph.D.
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center
151 Patton Avenue
Asheville, NC 28801
Voice: +1-828-271-4287
Fax: +1-828-271-4876

     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    [5]p.jones@uea.ac.uk
     NR4 7TJ
     UK
     ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
Thomas C. Peterson, Ph.D.
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center
151 Patton Avenue
Asheville, NC 28801
Voice: +1-828-271-4287
Fax: +1-828-271-4876

