From	GIORGI FILIPPO	Date	Tue, 12 Sep 2000 11:53:20 +0200 (MET DST)
To	Chapter 10 LAs -- Congbin Fu, GIORGI FILIPPO, Bruce Hewitson, Mike Hulme, Jens Christensen, Linda Mearns, Richard Jones, Hans von Storch, Peter Whetton
Subject	more on "what to do"
Dear All I think I heard replies to my last proposal from most of you. I have also had a phone conversation with Linda. So let me try to summarize the situation 1) From the replies I got, it sounds like at least the basic idea of my proposal is viable. In particular I read an at least semi-consensus, and certainly some strong individual positions, that the SRES material , since it is unpublished (and remember unreviewed until now), should not be presented as our sole or even primary source of conclusions. Now, I share that position and in fact quite strongly. Presenting such material breaks the proclaimed IPCC rules. Now the rules have been softened for this case, but remember that there are people around who are paid to find faults in the IPCC process and the last thing I want to do is being accused of having broken the rules. I think the TSU people are too optimistic and casual in the way they change the rules during the process and expect people to accept that this "just" happens. Remember what happened to Ben Santer after the SAR. Besides, I myself think that material for a document as important as the TAR cannot be drawn from last-minute barely quality checked and un-peered reviewed material (people have barely looked at the MPI run that was completed last friday !!). It is up the the IPCC to better plan these things and avoid the mess. Be it as it may, unless somebody is strongly against this position, I will assume that we can proceed from this basis. 2) Having said the above, it is also clear the we can present the IPCC data in some format. Chapter 9 is doing it (remember also in their case the SRES stuff is only a minor component of the chapter) so we can and I think we should because it is relevant and important material, but with the proper caveats clearly up front, i.e. that whatever we present is a preliminary analysis that has not undergone a publication process. It would be certainly strange and confusing to have the SRES discussed in Chapter 9 but not in our chapter in some form. Besides we went through a significant effort to get it and process it. I myself think that the SRES information is important to provide. It is just unfortunate, but not surprising, that it came around too late. 3) So the question is at this point how do we present the SRES. I suggested not to incorporate it within the text of 10.3, since 10.3 is our assessment of published research which has undergone peer and government review. I stand strongly by that suggestion. Obviously 10.3 might need a bit of rewriting to make it flow better with possibly different conclusions but not more than that. I then suggested to make the Box an SRES Box including the +/- format figures (I thought we needed 4, i.e. two for each scenario, but Linda pointed out we really need only 2, one for precip and one for temperature each including the two scenariost). Now this offers several advantages: we can say right up front that this is from a preliminary analysis; we can separate it cleanly from the rest of the "official " text; it gives direct info in a format that people seem to like. Two very legitimate comments were made on this. Peter said, if we give this more palatable format (the +/- figures) only for SRES data would it not implicitly give it too much attention? Linda said: why not present similar plots for the IS92 data? The obvious action which would address both of these concerns is to present similar plots for the IS92 data. This is certainly an option. The only problem I see is that I think the clear separation of published and unpublished results would be lost if we put it in the BOX. The alternative is to do those figures and put them in 10.3, leaving the SRES for the BOX. This could be a good option, although it might require significant effort. All and all, I am still in favor of an SRES-only box with a clear statement up front that gets us off the hook in case of problems (you can see it as a sort of disclaimer I guess). So let's come to the next point: we need to decide on this and soon. The best way appears to be a conference call. Linda suggested thursday, which is fine with me. It now looks like Richard cannot organize this. So Linda I am afraid you are left with the organization of it. The call would have to be during European-South African afternoon - US morning and I am afraid I am not sure what time in Australia. problems is: Jens can you make it? I think Jens is the person in the group most strongly opposed to presenting SRES data, so it important he is in the conference call. It is also critical that Peter participates, given he has been the main player in all this. Now here is my proposal: Conference call on thursday 3 p.m. Trieste-Hamburg time, which means 4 p.m. Cape town time, 2 p.m. Bracknell time, 9 a.m. Boulder time, 8 a.m. Fairbanks time and ??? Australia time. Linda is this feasible for you to organize? Is this ok for all? Conbin, are you available at all? items of discussion: Question 1): Do we do an SRES BOX with +/- figures? Question 2): What are the technical details (n-1 vs. n-2 model agreement, inclusion of outliers, threshold for large vs. small vs. no change both for precip change and temperature amplification factor). Question 3): Do we do similar figures for IS92 data which would either replace the current figures on IS92 in the text (I think this would be perfectly acceptable since it is simply a way to present in a different way published results). Question 4): How do we incorporate the SRES results within the current executive summary I hope that by thursday I will have all data to do all relevant figures. I need to get CCC control and MPI-DMI data from Bruce and dig out the old IS92 data. If not by thursday then hopefully by friday. Once I have the data I can easily directly calculate all the thresholds necessary for doing the relevant figures. I will then circulate all the material to you. Needless to say that any data based on SRES that is circulated among us should NOT go any further (except for the chapter of course) until we decide what to do with it (a paper or something like that). In the mean time, I will never tire to keep asking you to please work on the section revisions and let's get those out of the way. Cheers, Filippo ################################################################ # Filippo Giorgi, Senior Scientist and Head, # # Physics of Weather and Climate Section # # The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics # # P.O. BOX 586, (Strada Costiera 11 for courier mail) # # 34100 Trieste, ITALY # # Phone: + 39 040 2240 425 # # Fax: + 39 040 2240 449 (or + 39 040 224 163) # # email: giorgi@ictp.trieste.it # ################################################################