From	David Thompson	Date	Tue, 9 Dec 2008 11:49:09 -0700
To	Phil Jones, Kennedy, John, Mike Wallace
Subject	the paper and a can of worms
hi all, I plan on sending the 'penultimate' draft of the full paper later today, but thought I'd comment on the NH/SH comparison in a separate email. Anyway, I've been debating adding a comparison of the NH and SH, as per your suggestions. But I think I'm going to delay that discussion to a different paper. The current paper is already long. And I think looking at the differences between the hemispheres is going to open a can of worms. Here is an example that influenced my thinking: The time series in the attached figure show the differences between the NH and SH mean (0-90N minus 0-90S) for the raw data (top) and ENSO/COWL residual data (bottom). (COWL is removed only from the NH). Among many things, the difference time series show that the cooling in the 70s is largest in the NH, which we know from previous work. Maybe it's just my eye, but the differences between the time series in the 70s look almost discrete. It's as if the NH ratcheted downwards relative to the SH in a very short period ~1968, then crept upwards through the present. My thinking is that we will get a lot of mileage out of comparing the hemispheres, but that to do it right, it's going to take a fair bit more analysis. And at 27 pages I think we're pushing the attention span of the average reader. So I'm going to delay the analysis to our next paper. It gives us something to do in future! Paper will follow later... -Dave -------------------------------------------------------------------- David W. J. Thompson www.atmos.colostate.edu/~davet  Dept of Atmospheric Science Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 USA Phone: 970-491-3338 Fax: 970-491-8449 hi all, I plan on sending the 'penultimate' draft of the full paper later today, but thought I'd comment on the NH/SH comparison in a separate email. Anyway, I've been debating adding a comparison of the NH and SH, as per your suggestions. But I think I'm going to delay that discussion to a different paper. The current paper is already long. And I think looking at the differences between the hemispheres is going to open a can of worms. Here is an example that influenced my thinking: The time series in the attached figure show the differences between the NH and SH mean (0-90N minus 0-90S) for the raw data (top) and ENSO/COWL residual data (bottom). (COWL is removed only from the NH). Among many things, the difference time series show that the cooling in the 70s is largest in the NH, which we know from previous work. Maybe it's just my eye, but the differences between the time series in the 70s look almost discrete. It's as if the NH ratcheted downwards relative to the SH in a very short period ~1968, then crept upwards through the present. My thinking is that we will get a lot of mileage out of comparing the hemispheres, but that to do it right, it's going to take a fair bit more analysis. And at 27 pages I think we're pushing the attention span of the average reader. So I'm going to delay the analysis to our next paper. It gives us something to do in future! Paper will follow later... -Dave -------------------------------------------------------------------- David W. J. Thompson www.atmos.colostate.edu/~davet Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\NHandSHRawFullResidual.pdf" Dept of Atmospheric Science Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 USA Phone: 970-491-3338 Fax: 970-491-8449