From	Jonathan T. Overpeck	Date	Mon, 27 Jun 2005 22:14:09 -0600
To	Keith Briffa, Tim Osborn, Eystein Jansen
Subject	the Med Warm Period Box - Peck comments/edits
Gentlemen - attached is the ZOD Med Warm Period Box with my edits/comments. I don't see anything sent since then, so hope I'm not editing the wrong thing. In any case, the Box was pretty nice as is, so I only made a few changes. Obviously, some updating w/ new studies is needed. The big issues are two: 1) the recent Wall Street Journal editiorial that is creating all the crap in the US actually showed a time series from the IPCC FAR - if you don't have it, or Eystein can't send, I can scan it in (my Republican Dad sends me these things, although he's an increasingly rare breed of moderate Republican). My thought is that it might we worth adding a couple lines documenting how the view of the MWP changed with each assessment and new knowledge. In doing so, it could be made very clear that there is a reason that scientists don't show those old plots anymore. We need to move the debate beyond the FAR, SAR and TAR on this issue! 2) it would be cool to have another figure that made the point about no single synchronous period warmer than late 20th century. This is where I get soft with respect to Tom's plot. If it is published to the extent we need it, and if the composite or large-area average recon is the same as you are showing in your great new Fig 1, then it seems that it would be reasonable to show Tom's fig as part of the Box - just to show the same thing in a different way, and to hammer in one more nail. That said, I'm not sure if my two conditions above are met (I emailed Tom, no response yet - you might have insight), and I believe you just don't like Tom's fig for some - probably good - reason. But, I wanted us to think extra hard about whether there is SOME fig that might work? That's it for tonight. Will finish editing your main text next work session tomorrow I hope. Best, Peck -- Jonathan T. Overpeck Director, Institute for the Study of Planet Earth Professor, Department of Geosciences Professor, Department of Atmospheric Sciences Mail and Fedex Address: Institute for the Study of Planet Earth 715 N. Park Ave. 2nd Floor University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 direct tel: +1 520 622-9065 fax: +1 520 792-8795 http://www.geo.arizona.edu/ http://www.ispe.arizona.edu/ Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\MWP_box_textjto.doc"