From	Keith Briffa	Date	Fri Aug 13 17:37:10 2004
To	john.birks@bot.uib.no, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, dirk.verschuren@ugent.be, Laurent Labeyrie, juerg.beer@eawag.ch, a.lotter@bio.uu.nl, Tim Osborn, hufischer@awi-bremerhaven.de, dan.charman@plymouth.ac.uk, karin@natgeo.su.se
CC	Heinz Wanner, Jan Esper, basil.davis@bgc-jena.mpg.de, sigfus@gfy.ku.dk, guiot@cerege.fr, ian.snowball@geol.lu.se, antti.ojala@gsf.fi, atle.nesje@geol.uib.no, Atte Korhola, keith.barber@soton.ac.uk, Sandy Tudhope, eavaganov@forest.akadem.ru, Eystein Jansen, Rick Battarbee, Tim Osborn, Jan Esper, brazdil@sci.muni.cz, benito@ccma.csis.es
Subject	IMPRINT
Dear Colleagues, This note is to solicit your possible collaboration in an application to the European Commission under Framework 6, possibly as one of the partners in IMPRINT. This is an integrated palaeoclimate/climate modelling project concerned primarily with the Holocene, but also incorporating specific studies on other interglacial warm periods. AT THIS STAGE THIS IS A PROVISIONAL ENQUIRY RATHER THAN A DEFINITE REQUEST FOR YOUR INVOLVEMENT. The project has been some time (years) in gestation and has evolved from other proposals. An unfinished draft is appended to this message for your information - but we would ask that you respect its confidentiality , whether or not you are interested in working with us. Eystein Jansen has agreed to coordinate IMPRINT. We are now refining the initial submission. I, and Valerie Masson, are nominally fronting WorkPackage 1: concerned with assembling, reinterpreting, amalgamating and analysing the climate data; a combination of instrumental, documentary and other indirect, proxy climate information. This Workpackage will also organise the aggregation of best possible climate forcing proxy evidence, as means of exploring links with the empirical climate data, but also as input to the significant effort in climate modelling to be undertaken in other workpackages. WorkPackage 1 has been divided into a number of sub themes or Tasks and these, along with the content of all Workpackages, is described in the attached document. Note that this is very much work in progress at this stage and your comments and input to all parts will be welcome. We will refine the wider list of collaborating institutes at a later stage. At this stage we envisage a total budget application of about 17 million Euro with a nominal share of 5 million for WorkPackage 1. While this is a large sum, I am sure you will appreciate that when distributed among many partners and stretched over five years it imposes a severe limitation on the total number of partners that can be feasibly included. Therefore we have had to conceive of different degrees, or levels, of involvement of the very many colleagues and institutions that are required to make this project a success. Thus, we envisage a distinction between a number of full partners, though again with varying resource allocation depending on specific inputs and requirements (still to be determined), and a larger number of collaborators. Specific funding will be allocated to facilitate the involvement of these many other groups, who we see taking part in workshops, in return for full access to joint data and modelling results. This is the only way that we see of overcoming the envisaged restriction imposed by the EC on total partner numbers. We have chosen partners who we hope will be able to furnish expertise in specific research areas and, hopefully, facilitate data assembly and exchange between members of the wider communities. PLEASE NOTE THAT THOSE PEOPLE LISTED IN THE "TO" LINE OF ADDRESSES ARE THOSE TENTATIVELY EARMARKED TO BE TASK LEADERS WITHIN WORKPACKAGE 1. THOSE LISTED UNDER THE "CC" HEADING ARE EARMARKED TO be PARTNERS - ORGANISING WORK AND DATA EXCHANGE WITHIN THEIR COMMUNITY. We have a suggested list of many others who we would hope to involve - but not at full partner level. Your input to the compleinon of this list will be asked for later. We would ask that , for now, you do not circulate this provisional proposal . We realise that many other partners could have been fully justifiably included, but the need for pragmatism must eventually limit their formal roles. We hope that this reality will be accepted by those colleagues not included as primary partners and they will still be willing to collaborate to achieve the wider aims of IMPRINT. The specific partner roles, as suggested to date, are described in the Workpackage 1 section of the appended IMPRINT document. Would you now please indicate whether or not you are willing to join this effort, and please feel free to comment on any aspect: of Workpackage 1 to myself and Valerie; or of the project as a whole to Eystein. With very best wishes, Keith -- Professor Keith Briffa, Climatic Research Unit University of East Anglia Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K. Phone: +44-1603-593909 Fax: +44-1603-507784