From	Keith Briffa	Date	Fri Jul 16 16:57:47 1999
To	Edward R. Cook
Subject	Re: Vagonov et al. Nature paper
Ed to be really honest, I don't see how this was ever accepted for publication in Nature. It is a confusing paper that leaves me asking what actually have they done and what is the so-called testable Hypothesis of which they speak. Why didn't they do the testing? Yes Sob river is the Polar Urals site and I don't know why they get the results they do for it. Thei precip. trends are dubious and our detailed regional response functions do not show a significant effect of high precip. in winter. I really have not had time to fully digest their message but I can't see why either they or Nature did not ask my opinion of it. My instinctive first reaction is that I doubt it is the answer but we do get results that support a recent loss of low-frequency spring temperature reponse in our data that may be consistent with their hypothesis of prolonged snow lie in recent decades. I have not spoken to Iain yet about the isotope data but I will. If you get any detaied thoughts on the Nature paper please let me know, as I don't know how to respond , if at all. best wishes Keith At 04:11 PM 7/14/99 EDT, you wrote: >Hi Keith, > >What is your take on the Vagonov et al. paper concerning the influence of >snowfall and melt timing on tree growth in Siberia? Frankly, I can't >believe it was published as is. It is amazinglly thin on details. Isn't Sob >the same site as your Polar Urals site? If so, why is the Sob response >window so radically shorter then the ones you identified in your Nature >paper for both density and ring width? I notice that they used Berezovo >instead of Salekhard, which is much closer according to the map. Is that >because daily data were only available for the Berezovo? Also, there is no >evidence for a decline or loss of temperature response in your data in the >post-1950s (I assume that you didn't apply a bodge here). This fully >contradicts their claims, although I do admit that such an effect might be >happening in some places. > >Cheers, > >Ed > > >