Dear Amy, Gerrit, and Bill:

I am sorry for my silence during the last few days. We just finished the semester and a lot of exams had to be given and graded and we had the commencement exercises yesterday. Thanks for doing such a nice job with putting the current versions of the presentations on the web.

I put this message as a formatted document on the web as well:

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~martins/irvine/irvine_summary.htm

If it is ok with you, I was thinking of putting the main page in my directory and link to the individual talks etc. from there. I will mention this main web site in my abstract:

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~martins/irvine/

Please comment and add to the material.  I will put more details of my presentation up before the end of the weekend. I am out of town 5/18 and 5/21 to 5/28. However, I plan to read e-mail every couple of days while I am away.

Best regards,
    Martin.
 

Here are my thoughts:

Format of presentations

As you know, we will have a total of 2 hours for our Climate segment, including ~45 minutes for discussion. Bill had suggested that each of us gives a presentation of about 25 minutes, including a few minutes of specific questions. That means, we have to limit ourselves to a maximum of about 20 transparencies, depending on their complexities. Let us keep in mind we will be talking to bright non-specialists. Do not put too much information in your presentation and use a very general vocabulary. We need to spend quite some time explaining what all those figures mean that we are presenting. I believe during our presentations we should point out recent developments and end with some thoughts were we feel the field is going (we could also do this in the discussion).

Content

I feel the key topics we need to cover are the following (taking into account our special interests):

• General characteristics of the Earth’s climate system
• Methods of reconstruction of paleoclimate
• Magnitude and characteristic frequencies of past climate change
• Methods, modeling
• El Nino, past, present, and future
• Thermohaline circulation, past and future
• Global warming

Outline of presentations

Martin Stute: The Earth’s Climate system and reconstruction of past climates

• The Earth’s climate system - elements, and N-S energy fluxes
• Feedback mechanisms - water vapor/clouds as examples?
• Reconstruction of past climate - pollen, stable isotopes, stable isotopes, bubbles in ice
• Magnitude and characteristic frequencies of past climate change
• Rapid climate change – YD?

• What is El Nino?
• The past two decades of ENSO: Observations and prediction
• Proxies of EL Nino/longer records?
• ENSO theory
• Applying our understanding to the past and future of ENSO

• Ocean circulation
• Variability over glacial/interglacial, millenium, and last century timescales
• Methods, modeling – ocean/atmosphere
• Role of ocean circulation in climate change
• Future climate change predictions – global and regional?

• What are the most exciting recent developments in our field?
• What should climate research focus on?
• Can we already see a human influence on the Earth's climate?
• How bad is global warming and do we need to do something about it?
• What will the local effects of global warming be?
• How do we feel about the Kyoto protocol?

Some practical issues:

I assume you have seen that we are supposed to send in three things by Friday:

• a 50 word description of our research interest
• a 250 word abstract of our talks, I will include the main website URL in mine
• fax or e-mail an introductory paper that can be handed out at the meeting for each of our three topics