From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@uea.ac.uk>
To: "Dr. Reinhard Böhm" <r.boehm@zamg.ac.at>, <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>, <maugeri@mailserver.unimi.it>, <t.nanni@isao.bo.cnr.it>, <m.brunetti@isao.bo.cnr.it>, <Dietmar.Wagenbach@iup.uni-heidelberg.de>, <jones@gkss.de>, <widmann@gkss.de>, <storch@gkss.de>
Subject: Re: ALPIPMOD-brainstorming
Date: Fri Jun 29 15:10:11 2001

   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

