From	Keith Briffa	Date	Fri Sep 28 12:51:28 2001
To	Tim Osborn
Subject	[Fwd: Rapid Climate Change]
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 11:32:30 +0100 From: Simon Tett Subject: [Fwd: Rapid Climate Change] Sender: simon.tett@metoffice.com To: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk, sandy.tudhope@ed.ac.uk X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; HP-UX B.11.00 9000/782) X-Accept-Language: en Dear Keith/Sandy, please don't pass on or discuss further -- this is the email I got from Phil Newton. So with some reluncance I get to put up a strawman. I will go with what we discussed in London but some nice graphics (or any thoughts) would be helpful -- do you have any you can send me. Simon Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 16:02:14 +0100 From: Philip Newton Subject: Rapid Climate Change To: sfbtett@email, a.j.watson@uea.ac.uk Cc: Meric Srokosz , Catrin Yeomans , Judy Parker , Nigel Collins , Neville Hollingworth Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="Boundary_(ID_5Sy4P7Icy2zVEqcBr4S8jA)" Dear Simon, Andy, Many thanks for agreeing to each give an informal presentation to the Steering Committee on the first afternoon of the meeting. As I mentioned on the phone, what I'm after is for each of you to look at the Abrupt proposal and Prescient proposal/draft-science plan (attached as WORD documents), stand well back, and put forward some ideas for how one might combine them into a single coherent programme. The intention is to lay the foundation for some discussion, both Monday afternoon and evening, in advance of the formal Steering Committee meeting item that will deal with developing a single science plan. All SC members will have the attached documents in their papers. I'll summarise the few constraints we have at the start of the Monday session, so you won't have to revisit the history; by the time we get to you, all will know that we have the task of coming up with a single plan, and the events leading up to that circumstance. The constraints as I see them are: The Rapid Climate Change programme has a budget of £20m. The Abrupt proposal was written to £16.9m, and the STB decided to invest £17.0m in thermohaline-related rapid climate change. This proposal contained both palaeo and modelling components (as well as modern observational/process work), and a strong complementarity and close working relationship with Prescient was always envisaged by the writers. The Prescient proposal was written to £8m, and the Prescient draft science plan (following reduced award) was written to £4.5m. The STB did not have a discussion about how the science of the two programmes should be combined, but the nature and chronology of events/discussions imply that the STB decision to spend £17m on thermohaline-related work should be respected. I do not see that this has to be translated as an inexorable shackling of the £4.5m Prescient science aims, given that a good fraction of the Prescient draft science plan seems to be potentially relevant to thermohaline-related climate change, and that there is notionally £3m of the £20m that is not tied to thermohaline-related work, and there is a strong palaeo/modelling element to Abrupt. So much for constraints. I do not want to give the impression that we are after a ring-fencing of Prescient and Abrupt monies and aims within Rapid. I would hope that there is scope for a much more integrated (in the sense of both palaeo/modern and obs/model) and coherent programme than that. One potential conflict, in the modelling context, seems to be the apparently regional approach of Abrupt cf the global approach of Prescient. I suspect (but may be wrong) that there is a scientific debate to be had as to whether an Atlantic-centric approach is sufficient to consider thermohaline-related climate change over NW Europe, or whether a more global treatment is required. On practicalities, I've got you down for 20 minutes each, and have set aside half an hour for discussion straight afterwards. Please let Catrin Yeomans (cvy@nerc.ac.uk) know your audio-visual needs. Get back to me if you need further clarification. All the best, Phil Dr Philip Newton Head of Marine Sciences Team Science Programmes Directorate Natural Environment Research Council Polaris House North Star Avenue Swindon SN2 1EU, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 1793 411636 Fax: +44 (0) 1793 411545 E-mail: ppn@nerc.ac.uk -- Professor Keith Briffa, Climatic Research Unit University of East Anglia Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K. Phone: +44-1603-593909 Fax: +44-1603-507784 [1]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[2]/ References 1. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/ 2. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/