'We have had two attempts to upgrade or alter the server software so that it will send the usual 32-bit apps to those who connect with a 64-bit client. Unfortunately, we haven't yet managed to make it work properly. All I can say is that we will manage it eventually.'

CONTINUED THANKS FROM THE CPDN GROUP IN OXFORD TO ALL USERS - YOUR HELP IS VERY MUCH APPRECIATED!


I took over from Nick as CPDN Coordinator in October and, among other things, have been busy finding out exactly what is being done here in Oxford with the CPDN data you so kindly provide. I hope you might find the following update about the group interesting.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Sue


We have just recently bid goodbye and good luck to PARDEEP PALL, who is moving on to take up a position at ETH, Zurich. Pardeep successfully completed his DPhil early this year looking at attributing the UK floods of Autumn 2000 to anthropogenic influences. He has since been working at CPDN as a post-doc. His experimental set-up - the Seasonal Attribution Project - will already be very familiar to many users! At ETH he will continue working on understanding and attributing/predicting extreme rainfall events.


HIRO YAMAZAKI, whose research background includes oceanography, GFD and planetary modelling and who joined CPDN originally on the computing side, is now working on the EU funded project MILLENNIUM investigating European climate of the last millennium. He is using the 'FAMOUS' model, a coarse resolution version of HadCM3 that enables about 1000 years of simulation to be performed in approximately the same time as one 160-year BBC simulation. Via CPDN he hopes to acquire a large ensemble of runs that begin in 800 AD and run for 1200 years, and will investigate changes not only in temperature but also in other quantities for which there are proxy data in Europe. Later on in the project he will also make future predictions of climate change under a variety of different emissions scenarios.


KUNIKO YAMAZAKI is in full writing up mode and is close to finishing her DPhil thesis. Kuniko is a physical oceanographer and has been studying some of the processes occurring in the ocean of the coupled model experiments. She is interested in how ocean heat uptake relates to the state of the ocean and how feedbacks are thereby formed. She has helped to develop a simple 2-level model, based on that of Jonathan Gregory at Reading University, and comparing it with the 20 ocean levels in the HadCM3 coupled model she finds it does very well. Her application for funding to continue as a post-doc was successful - congratulations Kuniko! - and in the New Year she plans to distribute experiments whereby she can investigate possible changes in the meridional overturning circulation in the North Atlantic resulting from idealised greenhouse gas change scenarios.


Third year DPhil student HELENE MURI is investigating how well CPDN models fare in simulating paleoclimates. She is looking particularly at the mid-Holocene period - 6000 years before present. Her work is important in helping us decide which models could most reliably be used for climate prediction. Her models will be tested against a variety of paleo-observations; as part of this she will use an offline vegetation model to determine which models produce a realistic shift of the Arctic treeline. She is very close to being able to distribute her slab experiments so look out for those!


HELEN HANLON, who is also a third year DPhil student, studies the summer '03 heatwave in southern Europe and is investigating whether and how this may be attributable to anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases. One aspect she is looking at is how soil moisture feedbacks may have contributed. Technically she is not actually involved in CPDN, instead using ECMWF's IFS (Integrated Forecasting System) running on their supercomputer, but it is just possible she might decide to involve herself with CPDN at some point. Watch this space.


RUTH CEREZO-MOTA, again a third year DPhil student, works with the high resolution regional model PRECIS. She is currently running this with NCEP and ERA-40 data providing boundary conditions. She is particularly interested in monsoon rainfall over Mexico and the importance of atmosphere/ocean coupling to the processes involved in this. She has a background in physical oceanography and has previously studied hurricanes using a simpler model. She does not plan to distribute any experiments via CPDN - rather her work contributes towards the general set-up and testing of the PRECIS model.


NEIL MASSEY originally joined CPDN as a research assistant but began a DPhil two years ago, during which time he has been developing a storm tracking algorithm which he will use to investigate possible changes to the location of storm tracks under various greenhouse gas emission scenarios. He is now taking a year 'out' to be employed on a contract among the Met. Office, CEH Wallingford and Oxford University, during which time he will calibrate his model against ERA-40 reanalyses. He is using a relatively high resolution atmosphere model (HadAM3P) forced with observed SSTs, similar to that used in Pardeep's Seasonal Attribution Project, but with a few modifications. Once the behaviour of this model has been validated he will then perform his storm track investigations.


DAN ROWLANDS has just started as a DPhil student having successfully completed an MPhys project with CPDN earlier this year. In his MPhys work he tested Clausius-Clapeyron predictions of changes in extreme precipitation over Northern Europe, using data from Pardeep's Seasonal Attribution Project ensemble. For his DPhil he is now investigating the issue of deciding which parameter combinations are likely to give the most reliable climate forecasts. Starting with the slab model data, he is initially calculating which combinations give the best agreement with observations; he will then use statistical techniques to devise new combinations which could potentially give an even better fit.


Earlier this year ROSALIND WEST completed her fourth year MPhys project in which she used CPDN data to investigate using the seasonal cycle in temperature to constrain climate sensitivity. She found quite different results for the slab and the coupled experiments and is in the process of writing this up for publication in the peer-reviewed literature.


Two new MPhys projects are planned to take place between now and March:
CHLOE SHARROCKS will be looking at relationships between temperature and precipitation changes in the slab model data, and
BENJAMIN GRANDEY will be investigating the effect of sulphate aerosol forcing in the coupled model experiments.


Scientists WILLIAM INGRAM, DAITHI STONE and DAVE FRAME continue to be very productively involved with the Climate Dynamics group in a large variety of ways - update to follow in the New Year!