From: Keith Briffa To: Eystein Jansen Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: URGENT : IMPRINT en RTN ?] Date: Tue May 17 17:03:25 2005 Eystein We have now heard from Hans Brelen that Millennium will definitely be funded . This means that the very worst case scenario has been realised - because it means that the EU are not likely to call for any palaeoclimate in the next funding round. I have to say that though there is normally an unfortunate element of randomness in the refereeing of EU proposals , that to a large extent is unfortunate but inevitable, I believe strongly that the system has let us down very badly in this case. It is clear that we, the IMPRINT community were misled ; first by Ib Troen's direction (given publicly in Utrecht) that we should produce a proposal which was of the scale to unify the whole Palaeoclimate community , with a specific role to bring data and modelling foci to bear on the issue of climate predictability; that we should be careful to not to over-emphasise the collection of new data but rather work mostly to consolidate and jointly interpret existing data , and that we should formulate a scheme were these fed directly into a hierarchy of modelling that would address model viability and issues of probability of future climate and its causes. Secondly, We were misled by the accepting , on the basis of the published call, that the EU required IP proposals of ambitious scope , large enough to move the science of European palaeoclimate forward as a whole and with relevance to globally important issues, with aims clearly beyond the scope of "slightly bigger STREPS" . On reading the cursory referees' responses to our proposal , I am also moved to express my own opinion that they are an insult to the community of researchers that constitute IMPRINT , and an indictment of the failure of the referees to address their assessment to the generally publicized aims of the IP concept. To describe the whole proposal as "too complicated", and to state that there is " no value" in the first four workpackages , and most of all to rate the quality of the consortium as 4 out of 5 , all require explicit justification well beyond the few lines with which we are presented. While I have no ill will at all regarding the competing proposal Millennium , I feel that the extended IMPRINT community can justifiably ask very serious questions regarding the apparent lack of equitable assessment of the two proposals in the light of the published call requirements - the efforts of the IMPRINT consortium over recent months at least deserve answers as to how , for the sake of 0.5 of a mark , that proposal will be funded when it clearly did not address the scope of the original call - in terms of community integration, emphasis on wider data consolidation, scope of model hierarchy, and specific addressing of the data/model integration towards the issue of climate sensitivity/predictability. Expressing these concerns should not be considered "sour grapes " . They are not and I congratulate the MILLENNIUM team on having succeeded . Rather these comments are justified because the review process has not taken account of the scope of the IP concept, and the need to invoke a research plan with the necessary breadth and expertise (and proven managerial ability - as can be gauged by the assessment of the CARBO OCEAN coordination plan) , and because the success of the much more limited MILLENNIUM project has already been cited by European officials as justification for the lack of any need to fund palaeoclimate research in the next call - effectively cutting off the wider paleoclimate community from EU research support for the next few years. I believe we are justified in questioning the operation of the IP concept , beyond the EU administration, which has , in my opinion has done a serious dis-service to our community and palaeoclimate in general. At 08:26 16/05/2005, Valérie Masson-Delmotte wrote: Dear Eystein and Keith, I hope that you had a good trip back from Beijing. On our side it was a bit hectic (3 hours delay in Amsterdam, arrival at midnight in Paris and lost of Pascale's luggage without ability to find where it was lost!). I have just received this suggestion from a CEA EC representative that there is a RTN Marie Curie call for september 8th which has a lot of funding - 220 Meuros. You can apply for up to 6 M euros for a series of PhD thesis and postdocs around a real research network (up to 3-4 contracts per participant). I think that it is an excellent idea... if you and your people, Eystein, would be ready to put some more energy in the proposal. It would require to re think about the scientific perimeter and the key partners maybe. Sincerely Valerie. Return-Path: Received: from muguet.saclay.cea.fr (muguet.saclay.cea.fr [132.166.192.6]) by dsm-mail.saclay.cea.fr (8.12.11/jtpda-5.4) with ESMTP id j4G6I6mU023329 for ; Mon, 16 May 2005 08:18:06 +0200 Received: from cincidele.saclay.cea.fr (cincidele.saclay.cea.fr [132.166.192.111]) by muguet.saclay.cea.fr (8.12.10/8.12.10/CEAnet-internes.4.0) with ESMTP id j4G6I7Tt016417 for ; Mon, 16 May 2005 08:18:07 +0200 (MEST) Received: from agrione.extra.cea.fr (unverified) by cincidele.saclay.cea.fr (Content Technologies SMTPRS 4.3.17) with ESMTP id for ; Mon, 16 May 2005 08:18:07 +0200 Received: from cirse.extra.cea.fr (cirse.extra.cea.fr [132.166.172.102]) by agrione.extra.cea.fr (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id j4G6FXcJ010248; Mon, 16 May 2005 08:15:33 +0200 (envelope-from jouzel@dsm-mail.saclay.cea.fr) Received: from shiva.jussieu.fr (shiva.jussieu.fr [134.157.0.129]) by cirse.extra.cea.fr (8.12.10/8.12.10/CEAnet-Internet.4.0) with ESMTP id j4G6I5AN028850; Mon, 16 May 2005 08:18:05 +0200 (MEST) Received: from [134.157.81.169] (169.ext.jussieu.fr [134.157.81.169]) by shiva.jussieu.fr (8.12.11/jtpda-5.4) with ESMTP id j4G6I069096644 ; Mon, 16 May 2005 08:18:03 +0200 (CEST) X-Ids: 165 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: jzipsl@mailhost.ipsl.jussieu.fr (Unverified) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 07:57:43 -0700 To: CAMINADE Jean Pierre From: Jean Jouzel Subject: Re: URGENT : IMPRINT en RTN ? Cc: masson@dsm-mail.saclay.cea.fr Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="============_-1095865763==_ma============" X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-1.7.2 (shiva.jussieu.fr [134.157.0.165]); Mon, 16 May 2005 08:18:05 +0200 (CEST) X-Antivirus: scanned by sophie at shiva.jussieu.fr X-Miltered: at dsm-mail with ID 42883B1E.000 by Joe's j-chkmail ([1]http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Miltered: at shiva.jussieu.fr with ID 42883B18.001 by Joe's j-chkmail ([2]http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-CEA-Source: externe X-CEA-DebugSpam: 13% X-CEA-Spam-Report: The following antispam rules were triggered by this message: Rule Score Description DATE_IN_FUTURE_06_12 1.300 Date: is 6 to 12 hours after Received: date X-CEA-Spam-Hits: DATE_IN_FUTURE_06_12 1.3, __CT 0, __CTYPE_HAS_BOUNDARY 0, __CTYPE_MULTIPART 0, __CTYPE_MULTIPART_ALT 0, __HAS_MSGID 0, __MIME_VERSION 0, __SANE_MSGID 0 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.64 (2004-01-11) on dsm-mail.cea.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.9 required=4.0 tests=BAYES_00,DATE_IN_FUTURE_06_12 autolearn=no version=2.64 Cher Jean - Pierre, Excuse-moi de réagir un peu tardivement (je reviens de Chine). Mais surtout merci pour ce courrier et l'aide proposée ; je pense vraiment que cela vaudrait le coup de le relancer sous la forme RTN et que l'obtention de post-docs correspond bien à l'idée d'imprint (exploitation des données, modélisation). Pour faire avancer les choses je mets copie à Valérie Masson - Delmotte une des chevilles ouvrières d'IMPRINT au LSCE. Je suggère à valérie de te contacter directement. Bien amicalement Jean Bonjour Jean, J'ai appris ce matin au GTN environnement qu'IMPRINT n'avait pas été accepté. Avez-vous pensé à le relancer sous la forme d'un (ou de plusieurs) RTN-Marie Curie (Research Training Network) pour l'appel du 8 septembre qui est richement doté (220 MEuros ! du jamais vu !); le montant demandé peut aller jusqu'à 6 MEuros, pas très loin d'IMPRINT. Il s'agit de proposer une série de post-docs et de thèses articulés autour d'un véritable projet de recherche; environ 3 à 4 CDD pour chaque participant. La DSM a une expérience dans ce domaine (Greencycles rien qu'au LSCE); on peut t'aider à te monter un projet taillé sur mesures. Aujourd'hui je ne vois que cette solution car manifestement la ligne "modélisation climat" ne repassera pas au 4ème appel et je ne vois rien d'autre d'aussi bien "doté" dans le paysage du FP6 (qui est sur sa fin). Cordialement JPC <[3]http://promos.hotbar.com/promos/promodll.dll?RunPromo&El=&SG=&RAND=25607&partner=hot bar> Jean Jouzel Directeur de l'Institut Pierre Simon Laplace - Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin Bâtiment d'Alembert, 5 Boulevard d'Alembert, 78280 Guyancourt tél : 33 (0) 1 39 25 58 16, fax : 33 (0) 1 39 25 58 22 Portable phone : 33 (0) 684759682 - Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Tour 45-46, 3ème étage, 303, 4 Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05 Bureau 303, e-mail : jzipsl@ipsl.jussieu.fr 01 44 27 49 92 *********** Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, UMR CEA-CNRS 1572 CE Saclay, Orme des Merisiers, 91191 Gif sur Yvette, FRANCE tél : 33 (0) 1 69 08 77 13, fax : 33 (0) 1 69 08 77 16 e-mail : jouzel@lsce.saclay.cea.fr

-- Professor Keith Briffa, Climatic Research Unit University of East Anglia Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K. Phone: +44-1603-593909 Fax: +44-1603-507784 [4]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/ References 1. http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr/ 2. http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr/ 3. http://promos.hotbar.com/promos/promodll.dll?RunPromo&El=&SG=&RAND=25607&partner=hotbar 4. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/