From: Leopold Haimberger <leopold.haimberger@univie.ac.at>
To: santer1@llnl.gov
Subject: Re: IJoC and Figure 4
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:33:28 +0100
Cc: Peter Thorne <peter.thorne@metoffice.gov.uk>,  Dian Seidel <dian.seidel@noaa.gov>, Tom Wigley <wigley@cgd.ucar.edu>, Karl Taylor <taylor13@llnl.gov>,  Thomas R Karl <Thomas.R.Karl@noaa.gov>, John Lanzante <John.Lanzante@noaa.gov>, Carl Mears <mears@remss.com>,  "David C. Bader" <bader2@llnl.gov>, "'Francis W. Zwiers'" <francis.zwiers@ec.gc.ca>,  Frank Wentz <frank.wentz@remss.com>, Melissa Free <melissa.free@noaa.gov>,  "Michael C. MacCracken" <mmaccrac@comcast.net>, Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>,  Steve Sherwood <Steven.Sherwood@yale.edu>, Steve Klein <klein21@mail.llnl.gov>,  'Susan Solomon' <ssolomon@al.noaa.gov>, Tim Osborn <t.osborn@uea.ac.uk>, Gavin Schmidt <gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov>,  "Hack, James J." <jhack@ornl.gov>

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Dear folks,

I believe Ben's suggestion is very  good compromise and we should
prepare a Fig. 4 with three RAOBCORE versions, RICH, HadAT and RATPAC. 
As I have understood Ben in his first description of Fig. 4, also the 
range of model trend profiles should be included.

Who will actually draw the figure? I can do this but I do not have the 
model data and I do not have the RATPAC profiles so far. It would be 
easiest to remove the Titchner et al. profiles and Steves profiles from 
Peter's plot. Or should we send our profile data to you, Ben? What do 
you think?

Concerning the possible reaction of Douglass et al.: RAOBCORE v1.2 and 
v1.3 are both published in the Haimberger(2007) RAOBCORE paper (where 
they were labeled differently). Thus they have at least omitted v1.3. 
RAOBCORE v1.4 time series have published in the May 2007 BAMS climate 
state of 2006 supplement.

Peter, myself, Dian and probably a few others will meet in Japan by the 
End of January and a few weeks later in Germany, where we can discuss 
the latest developments  and plan the publishing strategy.

Thanks a lot Ben for moderating this Fig. 4 issue.

Regards,

Leo

Ben Santer wrote:
> Dear folks,
> 
> Just a quick update. With the assistance of Tim Osborn, Phil Jones, and 
> Dian, I've now come to a decision about the disposition of our response 
> to Douglass et al. I've decided to submit to IJoC. I think this is a 
> fair and reasonable course of action. The IJoC editor (and various IJoC 
> editorial board members and Royal Meteorological Society members) now 
> recognize that the Douglass et al. paper contains serious statistical 
> flaws, and that its publication in IJoC reflects poorly on the IJoC and 
> Royal Meteorological Society. From my perspective, IJoC should be given 
> the opportunity to set the record straight.
> 
> The editor of IJoC, Glenn McGregor, has agreed to treat our paper as an 
> independent submission rather than as a comment on Douglass et al. This 
> avoids the situation that I was afraid of - that our paper would be 
> viewed as a comment, and Douglass et al. would have the "last word" in 
> this exchange. In my opinion (based on many years of interaction with 
> these guys), neither Douglass, Christy or Singer are capable of 
> admitting that their paper contained serious scientific errors. Their 
> "last word" would have been an attempt to obfuscate rather than 
> illuminate. That would have been very unfortunate.
> 
> If our contribution is published in IJoC, Douglass et al. will have the 
> opportunity to comment on it, and we will have the right to reply. 
> Ideally, any comment and reply should be published side-by-side in the 
> same issue of IJoC.
> 
> The other good news is that IJoC is prepared to handle our submission 
> expeditiously. My target, therefore, is to finalize our submission by 
> the end of next week. I hope to have a first draft to send you by no 
> later than next Tuesday.
> 
> Now on to the "Figure 4" issue. Thanks to many of you for very helpful 
> discussions and advice. Here are some comments:
> 
> 1) I think it is important to have a Figure 4. We need to provide 
> information on structural uncertainties in radiosonde-based estimates of 
> profiles of atmospheric temperature change. Douglass et al. did not 
> accurately portray the full range of structural uncertainties.
> 
> 2) I do not want our submission to detract from other publications 
> dealing with recent progress in the development of sonde-based 
> atmospheric temperature datasets. I am aware of at least four such 
> publications which are "in the pipeline".
> 
> 3) So here is my suggestion for a compromise.
> 
> o   If Leo is agreeable, I would like to show results from his three 
> RAOBCORE versions (v1.2, v1.3, and v1.4) in Figure 4. I'd also like to 
> include results from the RATPAC and HadAT datasets used by Douglass et 
> al. This allows us to illustrate that Douglass et al. were highly 
> selective in their choice of radiosonde data. They had access to results 
> from all three versions of RAOBCORE, but chose to show results from v1.2 
> only - the version that provided the best support for their "models are 
> inconsistent with observations" argument.
> 
> o   I suggest that we do NOT show the most recent radiosonde results 
> from the Hadley Centre (described in the Titchner et al. paper) or from 
> Steve Sherwood's group. This leaves more scope for a subsequent paper 
> along the lines suggested by Leo, which would synthesize the results 
> from the very latest sonde- and satellite-based temperature datasets, 
> and compare these results with model-based estimates of atmospheric 
> temperature change. I think that someone from the sonde community should 
> take the lead on such a paper.
> 
> 4) As Melissa has pointed out, Douglass et al. may argue that v1.2 was 
> published at the time they wrote their paper, while v1.3 and v1.4 were 
> unpublished (but submitted). I'm sure this is how Douglass et al. will 
> actually respond. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that Douglass et al. 
> should have at least mentioned the existence of the v1.3 and v1.4 results.
> 
> Do these suggested courses of action (submission to IJoC and inclusion 
> of a Figure 4 with RAOBCOREv1.2,v1.3,v1.4/RATPAC/HadAT data) sound 
> reasonable to you?
> 
> With best regards,
> 
> Ben
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> 
> Benjamin D. Santer
> Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison
> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
> P.O. Box 808, Mail Stop L-103
> Livermore, CA 94550, U.S.A.
> Tel:   (925) 422-2486
> FAX:   (925) 422-7675
> email: santer1@llnl.gov
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> 

-- 
Ao. Univ. Prof. Dr. Leopold Haimberger
Institut für Meteorologie und Geophysik, Universität Wien
Althanstraße 14, A - 1090 Wien
Tel.: +43 1 4277 53712
Fax.: +43 1 4277 9537
http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/~haimbel7/
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