From	Keith Briffa	Date	Fri Jun 29 15:10:11 2001
To	Dr. Reinhard Böhm, Phil Jones, maugeri@mailserver.unimi.it, t.nanni@isao.bo.cnr.it, m.brunetti@isao.bo.cnr.it, dietmar.wagenbach@iup.uni-heidelberg.de, Julie Jones, widmann@gkss.de, Hans von Storch
Subject	Re: ALPIPMOD-brainstorming
Hi everyone I have been through the ideas and offer a few (aptly non organised) comments. First Phil is away and will not be able to comment until later. First, the project needs more explicit focus. The call will focused on natural variability . We are offering a detailed analysis of the variability of climate in the Alpine Region that focuses on CLIVAR timescales - basically very high resolution and not extending much beyond a few centuries. The project incorporates instrumental , model and palaeodata . The inter-relationships between these will be studied to gain an understanding of the nature and mechanisms of the climate variability - but is this enough. I feel it needs to be linked with a strong element of understanding the range of social/economic impacts of this variability. Perhaps looking at aspects such as avalanches, forest damage, floods, tourism etc.? I merely put this out as a straw man . I feel the EC are putting a lot of emphasis on this aspect of research and incorporating research and researchers in these or similar areas will be a big plus. As for the specific points in the brainstorming document - The Dendro aspect : I think it is essential to update the Alpine tree-ring chronologies that are available . This is because they are a proven asset but many questions regarding tree-productivity (in relation to observed 20th century climate variability) simply can not be addressed without doing this. Many were collected over 20 years ago. The additional data would then allow new processing techniques to be employed and vital questions concerning the changing responses of tree-growth to explored. The most efficient way to do this is to involve several groups working in the Alps , (Thank you for sending the Thesis by Giorgio Strumia which is certainly a very impressive piece of work) I would think Rupert Wimmer's group and the Birmensdorf group would be ideal (Fritz Schweingruber has retired but Jan Esper has joined them in his place - I can ask them to be involved but this depends on what the group here think are the priorities and how much we see as the overall budget and institutional allocations). I should say here that I think we would require money for a single person who could , if it is agreed, work on aspects of tree-ring processing and relationships with climate in association with the other tree-ring groups, but also work with the climate and model data , especially with a view to exploring the statistical inter-relationships and dynamical associations between the different climate data sets. There is also the French tree-ring group at Marseille? Perhaps though not all need to partners - ALSO I am thinking of putting together a European Tree-ring project (or suggesting it as part of a large European integrated proxy study of Holocene variability) so if this happened there could be a link between it (involving some of the groups mentioned) and this proposal. The Swiss might be interested to produce selected site tree-ring density/updating which I think would be very valuable and I will speak to them without commitment as you ask. As for some of the climate analysis possibilities mentioned, I very much like the ideas of detailed ,local climate comparisons with the larger CRU (and CRUder!) data. We are very interested in the association between time dependence in the relationships between circulation changes and changes in Temp. and Prec. Also changes in the nature of climate seasonality , and also extreme events (frost frequency , drought, intense rainfall). The detailed analyses of these characteristics also compliments the interpretational work on the tree-ring and glacier mass balance (and socio economic foci) data. As for the glacier work - is not a huge effort already going into this? I think it is important but does it fit as well ? The work proposed would have to be distinguished from other ongoing efforts - though I do like the idea of linking the geomorphological evidence of past glacier change (moraines , pro-glacial sediment data?) with reconstructed glacier volume changes , where the reconstructions are based on new long instrumental data , and palaeodata (temp. and precip.) used to drive a model of the glacier volume. Our German (or Julie) colleagues can point to such work based on GCM output . My colleague here (Sarah Raper) has also done this sort of work but using a very simple model to estimate past Storglaciaren (in Sweden) volume changes and her results imply that these models must be forward driven and not based on simple regression analysis using temperature and precipitation to estimate past mass balance. The future aspects of the discussion are important - and it is true that the previous EC call dealt with modelling and scenarios of future changes. Here, I believe the use of models should be strictly limited to understanding natural /current variability and change. There is no benefit in going for a 2 year project - I strongly urge 3. I also would find a meeting difficult. I am away from 17-29 July, and 11-25 August, and in meetings during 7-10th July and 26-31st August. Phil will be back here next week and will no doubt comment in more detail on the instrumental analysis aspects then. Very best wishes to all Keith At 05:13 PM 6/25/01 +0200, Dr. Reinhard Böhm wrote: Friends, As announced last Friday, we want to open a first round of brainstorming about the contents of our project. We have collected what we have received from You so far and have it mixed with our own ideas (file Brainstorming-1.doc). It does not have a nice structure and there are still a number of question marks, as You will see. Please add things where you think something is missing and please feel free to tell us which points make no sense, or are too ambitious or simply too much work. Please consider also the "how to do it" (state of the art methods, new approaches to solve problems, other data than those mentioned, other topics.....). Please try also to find Your position in the project, tell us what You would prefer to do.... Please try to consider whether we would have to include other groups in terms of scientific potential and/or in terms of data (For example: Keith Briffa you mentioned Fritz Schweingruber as the leading data holder of Alpine tree-ring data. Do you think we should ask him to join us, or could You use his data also without him being a contractor of the project? In case You want him in the project could we kindly ask you to contact him, being much more familiar with him and with the tree-ring topic than we are?) We would be glad to receive a very short answer from everybody within this week, because from June 30th to July 15th all the three of us will not be at the institute. For more detailed considerations and answers You have more time, it would be nice to be able to study them after our return by mid of July. But please use also the possibilities to contact the other groups - the sooner we integrate to a group the better it is. Our time-table for the rest of the time until October: July 16th to August 14th: We are at the institute, hoping to bring the project into a near to final version what concerns the scientific content August 15th to August 28th: Ice core conference at Kangerlussuaq (Greenland) August 29th to September 17th: We are at the institute most of the time. We hope this will be the time to elaborate the EU-shaped complete version. September 18th to September 22nd: Big events going on in Vienna which may cut down our time for the project (150th anniversary of our institute, Climate conference DACH-2001 (in German)) September 24th to October: Time reserved for all the things that could not be done yet in spite of our time table Could each of You please inform us about Your time table during summer and autumn? A question to all of You: How do You think about one 2-days meeting this Summer or in early September? What place do You prefer? If it is Austria we would have two low cost possibilities: 1): at our institute and 2) (more adventurous): At the Sonnblick-observatory (You do not have to have Alpinistic experience, we have a private cable car going up) Some remaining questions: Should we try a 2-years or a 3-years project? Can everybody live with roughly 300.000 Euro (This would result into somewhere between 1.5 and two millions, which we heard is a magnitude preferred by the commission). Please consider not only the sum of money but also how to spend it and how to fill it with a reasonable equivalent in work amount. What is your feeling about the "Climate variability atlas of the Alps"? Is it good to have one main deliverable like that or should we better produce a number of smaller things? One last technical remark: Please send your comments and mails not only to Vienna, but also to the other groups (or at least to those You believe would be interested in what You write). I do not think this would spoil too much our mail boxes and it has the advantage to include the whole intellectual power of our group into the construction phase of the proposal. Looking forward to Your replies, ideas, time tables and anything else With best regards Reinhard -- Dr. Keith Briffa, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom Phone: +44-1603-593909 Fax: +44-1603-507784