Seems to be linked to the 'preview' function. Will try to paste results.

Test A 403 after preview/

403 Forbidden

k3S2M4gR/lGgfjjTJ @ Thu, 26 Nov 2015 01:46:50 GMT

SEC-61

Test C with preview:

403 Forbidden

cEvLTeBA/8rm65YdS @ Thu, 26 Nov 2015 01:51:08 GMT

SEC-61

Test B went down the oubliette.

Does seem to be the preview button.

Yes, a few days ago, preview would provoke it after about three previews. But last night after just one.

Or a succession of postings without previews (last night just three, a few days before, up to 14 postings)

Changing your IP address clears it. [My internet service provider gives me a new IP address whenever I disconnect and reconnect the ADSL modem at the PPPoA level.]

Could the fact that on discussion pages, after creating a post, I for one have to move off that discussion before the comment text box and buttons are re-instated and the just posted comment on the page be involved in this problem?

Just a thought for the developrrs, most systems totally rebuild the page which is not the case on BH.

SandyS - I am not sure I understand what you said. I need to try it for myself to be sure I understand.

I'm currently having some discussion with Squarespace - they have given me a detailed account of the testing they did and seemed astonished that the problem had not gone away. Because of my previous experience in helping a support organisation transform itself, I am not at all surprised.

However, this is a problem that seemed to have appeared out of the blue (so far as BH commenters are concerned) about three weeks ago. It seems to be the result of a complicated hack by squarespace to suppress spam that has side effects they did not foresee and for which they did not have (or did not use) a roll-back plan if things did not work properly.

I think their problems are more organisational than technical. A problem like this should never have been seen by users or, at worst, if seen it should have been resolved quickly. That the problem is still there and worse than ever after three weeks is very bad.

SandyS I for one have to move off that discussion before the comment text box and buttons are re-instated

I did not see that. I posted the comment above and it appeared. I then clicked on 'post a reply' and the box I am now typing in appeared. I did not have to move off the discussion between posting the comment above and this one (if 403 will let me...)

Trying the effect of a l o n g comment.
___________________________
I have been involved in full time research since completing my doctoral thesis in 1984. During this time I have been entirely supported through my acquisition of research grants gained in open competition. I became a Reader at the Climatic Research Unit in 1996. With a background in ecology, my primary research interests are in climatology, and particularly in Holocene palaeoclimatology: the elucidation of the variability of climate changes and their causes during the time since the last Ice Age. I am a specialist in dendroclimatology: the use of tree-ring data for climate reconstruction. I have made important contributions to the literature dealing with the statistical and methodological aspects of dendroclimatological analysis and have published numerous tree-ring reconstructions. These include widely cited papers describing summer temperature changes in North America, Fennoscandia, western Europe and Siberia.

During the last decade, I have played a significant role in raising the profile of tree-ring research to a point where it is now generally recognised as a vital component of international research programmes that aim to understand the nature of climate variability, especially in the context of identifying anthropogenic climate change. Additional palaeoclimate reconstructions are badly needed to increase the global coverage in both time and space. It is also necessary to explore the ways in which different palaeoclimate data should now be brought together to provide optimal datasets from which to infer changes in the earth’s climate over recent millennia, and within which to search for the causes of this variability.

A major focus for such work is the need to test the realism of the ‘natural’ climate variability produced by General Circulation Models and hence aid the task of identifying a human influence on climate. Within this proposal I offer an approach to how palaeoclimate data can be used to this end. This work involves strategic goals and the need for research to address pressing issues of tree-ring (and other proxy) interpretation, several arising out of my recent work. I will continue to produce detailed multi-century tree-ring temperature reconstructions, both regional-average series and detailed hemispheric maps, and much longer reconstructions in several high-latitude regions, spanning many thousands of years. I will explore the extent to which these can be interpreted as evidence of atmospheric circulation changes and how these are linked with various forcing proxies. I will explore methods of establishing realistic confidence limits on tree-ring and other palaeo-reconstructions. I will investigate the reasons behind a dramatic change in the sensitivity of high-latitude tree growth since the 1950s and the problems this poses for empirical modelling of past temperatures. Finally, I will use the tree-ring data to derive long-term estimates of northern boreal forest biomass changes and explore the implications for carbon cycle and hence climate prediction experiments.

During the last 15 years, I have run or coordinated a number of research projects funded by the European Community, the UK Forestry Commission and NERC. For the last six years, I have been the co-ordinator of two large international collaborative projects funded under the European Framework IV Convention. The current project involves 15 institutions working in nine countries and is scheduled to finish in February 1999.

I have an international reputation for expertise in the general area of high-resolution palaeoclimatology. I sit on the Scientific Steering Committee of IGBP PAGES (Past Global Changes) and I will continue to be very much involved in this and other international scientific coordination initiatives, such as CLIVAR: the WCRP Climate Variability and Predictability Experiment. I anticipate contributing to the next IPCC report. I have recently been awarded a number of small NERC and EC research grants and am very hopeful of success in a larger pending NERC application. This pending project will also directly address the issue of how palaeoclimate data can be used to assess the realism of ‘natural’ climate variability in GCM control run experiments. However, none of these projects will provide me with salary. At this time it is not known when further European Community support through the EC Framework V Convention will be available. Meanwhile, my scientific commitments are significant. I will be coordinating the production of a major PAGES Review of Holocene climate and I am currently heading the organisation and drafting of a proposal to NERC for a large Thematic Research Programme intended to link the palaeo and climate modelling communities in collaborative work over the next five years.

I am applying for this Fellowship now, in the hope of achieving some continuity of support over an extended period. This will enable me to better coordinate my research into these important palaeoclimate-related areas. The award of this Fellowship would allow me to devote future research funds to supporting other researchers, significantly enhancing the scope and progress of this work in future years.

TREE-RING AND OTHER PALAEOCLIMATIC DATA FOR DEFINING
HOLOCENE ‘NATURAL’ CLIMATE VARIABILITY:

A proposal for a NERC Senior Research Fellowship by Keith R Briffa

Introduction
This application begins with a brief outline of my academic history. My ability to win research funding is illustrated through the description of a selection of my recent projects. The general theme of my proposed Fellowship research is outlined along with a list of specific research topics. In the sections that follow, I expand on several of the major topics, attempting to provide sufficient general background, evidence of the links between them, and details of the specific research lines that I wish to pursue. Space restrictions preclude an account of many technical details and many references to the background literature. Please note that throughout this proposal superscript numbers following citations refer to the numbered reference in the separate accompanying list of my publications. Reference details are given at the end of this proposal document only for those cited papers upon which I am not an author.

Research Background
With a degree in Biological Sciences, I joined the Climatic Research Unit in 1977 initially working on the assembly, interpretation and geographic interrogation of published evidence for climatic changes over the last few millennia. Through this work I developed an interest in tree-ring research. My subsequent doctoral project (Briffa, 19841 ) developed a now established method for the spatial reconstruction of climate using tree-ring principal component regression (Briffa et al., 19832, 865 ; Cook et al., 19942 ). At the same time in the early 1980s, along with Dr Tim Atkinson, I helped to develop the Mutual Climate Range (MCR) method that produced quantitative seasonal temperature reconstructions of British temperatures through Late Glacial time (Atkinson et al., 19862 ; Briffa and Atkinson, 19971 ). From 1984 onwards I have run my own research projects. These have all been concerned in some way with tree-ring research, most with climate reconstruction, except for one project on tree-ring chemistry, concerned with tree-ring dieback in an area of north Wales (Briffa et al., 19891 , 19955 ). I do, however, maintain a strong interest in climatology and have published papers concerned with UK circulation indices (Briffa et al., 19906 ), regional (Briffa and Jones, 19924 ; Jones and Briffa, 19957 ) and Hemispheric (Jones and Briffa, 19924 ; Briffa and Jones, 19932 ; Jones et al., 19975 ) temperature; and European and British moisture changes (Briffa et al., 19943, Jones et al., 19974). My major output, however, is concerned with the statistical aspects of tree-ring chronology development and related uncertainties (Briffa et al., 19873 ; Briffa and Jones, 19902 ; Briffa and Cook, 19904 ; Briffa, 19953 ) and climate reconstruction. In the last decade I have published widely cited reconstructions of climate variability in different parts of the world, such as North America (Briffa et al., 19923 ; Luckman et al., 19977 ); Fennoscandia (Briffa et al., 19907 ; 19926 ); western Europe (Schweingruber et al., 19911 ); and Siberia (Briffa et al., 19951 ; 19963 ). In recent years I have given increasing attention to the question of interpreting these data in terms of large scale (including hemispheric) representations of past summer temperatures, what controls them (Briffa et al., 19984,7 ) and how they can be used in a ‘climate change detection’ context (Briffa et al., 19962, 19981 ; Jones et al., 19985 ). It is this recent work that spawned the ideas contained in this application.

Summary of Selected Relevant Recent Grants
In recent years I have, with other colleagues, been awarded a number of NERC and other grants. I am either the principal or co-principal investigator on all these projects. In 1993, I completed a NERC project concerned with the construction of a multi-millennial tree-ring chronology in northern Sweden (GST/02/49B). Later I had a small NERC grant to investigate the potential for tree-ring work in Ethiopia (GR9/2164) and an EC grant to foster collaborative research with colleagues in Chile and Argentina (CT93-0336: DG12 HSMU). Below are described in more detail, a number of relevant recently completed, and forthcoming projects. Note that except for ADVANCE-10K, due to finish in early 1999, none of these provides me with salary.

Relationships between European Climate and the North Atlantic Oscillation: observations, models and palaeodata (with Dr P.D. Jones) (GR9/02522)
This project, recently completed, set out to explore the realism of the simulation of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) within the one important GCM developed at the UK Meteorological Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research (i.e. HadCM2). This research established that the model NAO was well simulated, both in terms of variability and in its influence on patterns of European temperature and precipitation (Osborn et al., submitted1 ). We also showed that the recent observed NAO (1963-92) behaviour is unprecedented if the model-generated variability is realistic. This work has led to another submission (GR3/12107; ML:21) discussed later.

Analysis of Dendrochronological Variability and Associated Natural Climates in Eurasia during the last 10,000 Years (ADVANCE-10K)
This project is a spatial and major temporal expansion of an earlier EC contract (EV5Y-CT94-0500), concerned with tree-ring chronology construction and dendroclimatic reconstructions over Northern Eurasia during most of the Holocene period. With a total cost of 1,079,992 ECU, it involves 12 institutions in seven countries and is due to terminate at the end of February 1999. I am the project co-ordinator. This project, together with its predecessor, represents an important stage in the development of European dendroclimatology in that it has, for the first time, brought together many of the European laboratories specialising in different disciplines of tree-ring-related work, but not necessarily with a focus on climate reconstruction, to screen and amalgamate the vast bulk of European data. Major important new collections are also underway, including the construction of an extensive network of tree-ring density data from cool, moist sites around the Northern Hemisphere. The current focus in this work is on northern Siberia, where many chronologies extending over hundreds of years are being assembled. In special areas of northern Sweden, Finland, and western and central northern Siberia, very long chronologies, spanning thousands of years, are being built from subfossil wood. These data have already yielded many publications, but a huge amount of potential is yet to be realised - we are preparing detailed year by year maps of growing season degree days across northern Eurasia for 300-400 years; hemispheric maps of growth anomalies showing changing regional-scale patterns of extended summer (April-Sept. mean) conditions, and their associated circulation features. These data are also being amalgamated to show very-large-scale mean temperature changes, even representing average hemispheric conditions.
We have recently published (Briffa et al., 19987 ) quantitative evidence of the timing and magnitude of hemispheric summer cooling initiated by major explosive eruptions throughout the last 400 years. These same data have yielded startling evidence of an as yet unexplained decline in the sensitivity of the growth trends to large-scale temperature changes since the middle of the last century (Briffa et al., 19984 ) and provided preliminary evidence of a major increase in the long-term productivity of northern boreal forest trees since the last century. Much work is required to further enhance this tree-ring densitometric data base in the coming years, and in further exploiting its enormous palaeoclimate and palaeoecological potential. This will require investigation into the precedence of the changes in productivity and climate sensitivity of these data in recent times; their interrelationships; and, of course, the implications for the interpretation of past data.
We fully expect to receive further EC support but at present this is unlikely to be before 2000 at the earliest and may require a change of emphasis, perhaps towards the use of the data in specific GCM model comparison studies. These issues are discussed in more detail in the following Section on ‘Proposed Research’.

In situ sensitivity of tree growth to long-term CO2-enrichment and climatic warming, and its implications for past climate reconstructions (with Dr D. Beerling) (GR9/03923)
This project will run for nine months, starting in early 1999. It was designed to exploit a unique opportunity to investigate the individual effects of increased CO2 levels and raised temperatures on the ring-width and ring-densities of mature pine and birch trees that have grown in an experimental greenhouse for five years (as part of the CLIMEX experiment at Risdalheia, S. Norway). Besides statistical comparisons of the experimental tree growth rates and climate responses before and after the experiment, comparison will be made with trees in the surrounding region. The experimental tree-growth responses to different CO2 and temperature treatments will be compared with measured leaf gas exchange and modelled productivity responses for corresponding years to assess the translation of leaf-scale to whole-tree growth effects.

High-Resolution Holocene Climate and Forcing (HIHOL)
This project was formulated by me and submitted for consideration to the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) of IGBP PAGES in June 1998. The concept is a “state of the art” review of high-resolution climate variability throughout the Holocene. It will incorporate reviews of different palaeodata; reviews of potential forcing histories that can be established with equal dating accuracy; a review of latest relevant modelling experiments; and a ‘concept’ synthesis in which established thinking about climate change and variability, and prospects and problems arising out of the above synthesis are reassessed. World leaders in various disciplines, including many of the PAGES SSC will be tasked with organising authoritative reviews based on submissions from active researchers within their communities. These submissions and reviews will form the basis of a Review Workshop to be held in late 1999 where existing concepts of Holocene climate and its variability and the links with forcing will be reassessed. This reassessment will provide the input to the final synthesis section in what will then become a Holocene Special Review, scheduled for publication by Arnold in 2000. The first tranche of funding to support travel costs has been provided by PAGES. I am coordinating the project and will be applying to the US National Science Foundation for further support. This will be a demanding but very exciting undertaking and the product will be a milestone in our understanding of high-resolution Holocene climates.

Multi-Millennial tree-ring chronologies in high-latitude Siberia: reconstructing Holocene temperatures and recent biomass changes (INTAS-97-1418)
This project has only recently been agreed under the auspices of the International Association for the Promotion of Cooperation with Scientists from the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (INTAS). It was a joint submission between myself and a Swiss colleague, Dr F.H. Schweingruber - primarily to support our ongoing collaboration with two Russian institutions in Ekaterinburg and Krasnoyarsk. It will run for two years, starting in late 1998. Though this grant only amounts to a total of 60,000 ECU, the 50,000 that will go to Russia represents a very significant underpinning of the work there, particularly given the deteriorating state of the current Russian economy. We received earlier funding from INTAS to establish the first tree-ring densitometric facility in Russia at Krasnoyarsk,. These institutions are currently sub-contractors to the current ADVANCE-10K project (see earlier). I view this collaboration as an essential springboard for further development of Russian dendroclimatology in the next decade. Such a development is vital if we are to succeed in the essential task of building a dense network of long tree-ring chronologies across Eurasia and the N. Hemisphere. One aspect of this particular work that should be emphasised here is its concentration on collecting necessary new tree-ring data and their interpretation in

And another....

I have been involved in full time research since completing my doctoral thesis in 1984. During this time I have been entirely supported through my acquisition of research grants gained in open competition. I became a Reader at the Climatic Research Unit in 1996. With a background in ecology, my primary research interests are in climatology, and particularly in Holocene palaeoclimatology: the elucidation of the variability of climate changes and their causes during the time since the last Ice Age. I am a specialist in dendroclimatology: the use of tree-ring data for climate reconstruction. I have made important contributions to the literature dealing with the statistical and methodological aspects of dendroclimatological analysis and have published numerous tree-ring reconstructions. These include widely cited papers describing summer temperature changes in North America, Fennoscandia, western Europe and Siberia.

During the last decade, I have played a significant role in raising the profile of tree-ring research to a point where it is now generally recognised as a vital component of international research programmes that aim to understand the nature of climate variability, especially in the context of identifying anthropogenic climate change. Additional palaeoclimate reconstructions are badly needed to increase the global coverage in both time and space. It is also necessary to explore the ways in which different palaeoclimate data should now be brought together to provide optimal datasets from which to infer changes in the earth’s climate over recent millennia, and within which to search for the causes of this variability.

A major focus for such work is the need to test the realism of the ‘natural’ climate variability produced by General Circulation Models and hence aid the task of identifying a human influence on climate. Within this proposal I offer an approach to how palaeoclimate data can be used to this end. This work involves strategic goals and the need for research to address pressing issues of tree-ring (and other proxy) interpretation, several arising out of my recent work. I will continue to produce detailed multi-century tree-ring temperature reconstructions, both regional-average series and detailed hemispheric maps, and much longer reconstructions in several high-latitude regions, spanning many thousands of years. I will explore the extent to which these can be interpreted as evidence of atmospheric circulation changes and how these are linked with various forcing proxies. I will explore methods of establishing realistic confidence limits on tree-ring and other palaeo-reconstructions. I will investigate the reasons behind a dramatic change in the sensitivity of high-latitude tree growth since the 1950s and the problems this poses for empirical modelling of past temperatures. Finally, I will use the tree-ring data to derive long-term estimates of northern boreal forest biomass changes and explore the implications for carbon cycle and hence climate prediction experiments.

During the last 15 years, I have run or coordinated a number of research projects funded by the European Community, the UK Forestry Commission and NERC. For the last six years, I have been the co-ordinator of two large international collaborative projects funded under the European Framework IV Convention. The current project involves 15 institutions working in nine countries and is scheduled to finish in February 1999.

I have an international reputation for expertise in the general area of high-resolution palaeoclimatology. I sit on the Scientific Steering Committee of IGBP PAGES (Past Global Changes) and I will continue to be very much involved in this and other international scientific coordination initiatives, such as CLIVAR: the WCRP Climate Variability and Predictability Experiment. I anticipate contributing to the next IPCC report. I have recently been awarded a number of small NERC and EC research grants and am very hopeful of success in a larger pending NERC application. This pending project will also directly address the issue of how palaeoclimate data can be used to assess the realism of ‘natural’ climate variability in GCM control run experiments. However, none of these projects will provide me with salary. At this time it is not known when further European Community support through the EC Framework V Convention will be available. Meanwhile, my scientific commitments are significant. I will be coordinating the production of a major PAGES Review of Holocene climate and I am currently heading the organisation and drafting of a proposal to NERC for a large Thematic Research Programme intended to link the palaeo and climate modelling communities in collaborative work over the next five years.

I am applying for this Fellowship now, in the hope of achieving some continuity of support over an extended period. This will enable me to better coordinate my research into these important palaeoclimate-related areas. The award of this Fellowship would allow me to devote future research funds to supporting other researchers, significantly enhancing the scope and progress of this work in future years.

TREE-RING AND OTHER PALAEOCLIMATIC DATA FOR DEFINING
HOLOCENE ‘NATURAL’ CLIMATE VARIABILITY:

A proposal for a NERC Senior Research Fellowship by Keith R Briffa

Introduction
This application begins with a brief outline of my academic history. My ability to win research funding is illustrated through the description of a selection of my recent projects. The general theme of my proposed Fellowship research is outlined along with a list of specific research topics. In the sections that follow, I expand on several of the major topics, attempting to provide sufficient general background, evidence of the links between them, and details of the specific research lines that I wish to pursue. Space restrictions preclude an account of many technical details and many references to the background literature. Please note that throughout this proposal superscript numbers following citations refer to the numbered reference in the separate accompanying list of my publications. Reference details are given at the end of this proposal document only for those cited papers upon which I am not an author.

Research Background
With a degree in Biological Sciences, I joined the Climatic Research Unit in 1977 initially working on the assembly, interpretation and geographic interrogation of published evidence for climatic changes over the last few millennia. Through this work I developed an interest in tree-ring research. My subsequent doctoral project (Briffa, 19841 ) developed a now established method for the spatial reconstruction of climate using tree-ring principal component regression (Briffa et al., 19832, 865 ; Cook et al., 19942 ). At the same time in the early 1980s, along with Dr Tim Atkinson, I helped to develop the Mutual Climate Range (MCR) method that produced quantitative seasonal temperature reconstructions of British temperatures through Late Glacial time (Atkinson et al., 19862 ; Briffa and Atkinson, 19971 ). From 1984 onwards I have run my own research projects. These have all been concerned in some way with tree-ring research, most with climate reconstruction, except for one project on tree-ring chemistry, concerned with tree-ring dieback in an area of north Wales (Briffa et al., 19891 , 19955 ). I do, however, maintain a strong interest in climatology and have published papers concerned with UK circulation indices (Briffa et al., 19906 ), regional (Briffa and Jones, 19924 ; Jones and Briffa, 19957 ) and Hemispheric (Jones and Briffa, 19924 ; Briffa and Jones, 19932 ; Jones et al., 19975 ) temperature; and European and British moisture changes (Briffa et al., 19943, Jones et al., 19974). My major output, however, is concerned with the statistical aspects of tree-ring chronology development and related uncertainties (Briffa et al., 19873 ; Briffa and Jones, 19902 ; Briffa and Cook, 19904 ; Briffa, 19953 ) and climate reconstruction. In the last decade I have published widely cited reconstructions of climate variability in different parts of the world, such as North America (Briffa et al., 19923 ; Luckman et al., 19977 ); Fennoscandia (Briffa et al., 19907 ; 19926 ); western Europe (Schweingruber et al., 19911 ); and Siberia (Briffa et al., 19951 ; 19963 ). In recent years I have given increasing attention to the question of interpreting these data in terms of large scale (including hemispheric) representations of past summer temperatures, what controls them (Briffa et al., 19984,7 ) and how they can be used in a ‘climate change detection’ context (Briffa et al., 19962, 19981 ; Jones et al., 19985 ). It is this recent work that spawned the ideas contained in this application.

Summary of Selected Relevant Recent Grants
In recent years I have, with other colleagues, been awarded a number of NERC and other grants. I am either the principal or co-principal investigator on all these projects. In 1993, I completed a NERC project concerned with the construction of a multi-millennial tree-ring chronology in northern Sweden (GST/02/49B). Later I had a small NERC grant to investigate the potential for tree-ring work in Ethiopia (GR9/2164) and an EC grant to foster collaborative research with colleagues in Chile and Argentina (CT93-0336: DG12 HSMU). Below are described in more detail, a number of relevant recently completed, and forthcoming projects. Note that except for ADVANCE-10K, due to finish in early 1999, none of these provides me with salary.

Relationships between European Climate and the North Atlantic Oscillation: observations, models and palaeodata (with Dr P.D. Jones) (GR9/02522)
This project, recently completed, set out to explore the realism of the simulation of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) within the one important GCM developed at the UK Meteorological Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research (i.e. HadCM2). This research established that the model NAO was well simulated, both in terms of variability and in its influence on patterns of European temperature and precipitation (Osborn et al., submitted1 ). We also showed that the recent observed NAO (1963-92) behaviour is unprecedented if the model-generated variability is realistic. This work has led to another submission (GR3/12107; ML:21) discussed later.

Analysis of Dendrochronological Variability and Associated Natural Climates in Eurasia during the last 10,000 Years (ADVANCE-10K)
This project is a spatial and major temporal expansion of an earlier EC contract (EV5Y-CT94-0500), concerned with tree-ring chronology construction and dendroclimatic reconstructions over Northern Eurasia during most of the Holocene period. With a total cost of 1,079,992 ECU, it involves 12 institutions in seven countries and is due to terminate at the end of February 1999. I am the project co-ordinator. This project, together with its predecessor, represents an important stage in the development of European dendroclimatology in that it has, for the first time, brought together many of the European laboratories specialising in different disciplines of tree-ring-related work, but not necessarily with a focus on climate reconstruction, to screen and amalgamate the vast bulk of European data. Major important new collections are also underway, including the construction of an extensive network of tree-ring density data from cool, moist sites around the Northern Hemisphere. The current focus in this work is on northern Siberia, where many chronologies extending over hundreds of years are being assembled. In special areas of northern Sweden, Finland, and western and central northern Siberia, very long chronologies, spanning thousands of years, are being built from subfossil wood. These data have already yielded many publications, but a huge amount of potential is yet to be realised - we are preparing detailed year by year maps of growing season degree days across northern Eurasia for 300-400 years; hemispheric maps of growth anomalies showing changing regional-scale patterns of extended summer (April-Sept. mean) conditions, and their associated circulation features. These data are also being amalgamated to show very-large-scale mean temperature changes, even representing average hemispheric conditions.
We have recently published (Briffa et al., 19987 ) quantitative evidence of the timing and magnitude of hemispheric summer cooling initiated by major explosive eruptions throughout the last 400 years. These same data have yielded startling evidence of an as yet unexplained decline in the sensitivity of the growth trends to large-scale temperature changes since the middle of the last century (Briffa et al., 19984 ) and provided preliminary evidence of a major increase in the long-term productivity of northern boreal forest trees since the last century. Much work is required to further enhance this tree-ring densitometric data base in the coming years, and in further exploiting its enormous palaeoclimate and palaeoecological potential. This will require investigation into the precedence of the changes in productivity and climate sensitivity of these data in recent times; their interrelationships; and, of course, the implications for the interpretation of past data.
We fully expect to receive further EC support but at present this is unlikely to be before 2000 at the earliest and may require a change of emphasis, perhaps towards the use of the data in specific GCM model comparison studies. These issues are discussed in more detail in the following Section on ‘Proposed Research’.

In situ sensitivity of tree growth to long-term CO2-enrichment and climatic warming, and its implications for past climate reconstructions (with Dr D. Beerling) (GR9/03923)
This project will run for nine months, starting in early 1999. It was designed to exploit a unique opportunity to investigate the individual effects of increased CO2 levels and raised temperatures on the ring-width and ring-densities of mature pine and birch trees that have grown in an experimental greenhouse for five years (as part of the CLIMEX experiment at Risdalheia, S. Norway). Besides statistical comparisons of the experimental tree growth rates and climate responses before and after the experiment, comparison will be made with trees in the surrounding region. The experimental tree-growth responses to different CO2 and temperature treatments will be compared with measured leaf gas exchange and modelled productivity responses for corresponding years to assess the translation of leaf-scale to whole-tree growth effects.

High-Resolution Holocene Climate and Forcing (HIHOL)
This project was formulated by me and submitted for consideration to the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) of IGBP PAGES in June 1998. The concept is a “state of the art” review of high-resolution climate variability throughout the Holocene. It will incorporate reviews of different palaeodata; reviews of potential forcing histories that can be established with equal dating accuracy; a review of latest relevant modelling experiments; and a ‘concept’ synthesis in which established thinking about climate change and variability, and prospects and problems arising out of the above synthesis are reassessed. World leaders in various disciplines, including many of the PAGES SSC will be tasked with organising authoritative reviews based on submissions from active researchers within their communities. These submissions and reviews will form the basis of a Review Workshop to be held in late 1999 where existing concepts of Holocene climate and its variability and the links with forcing will be reassessed. This reassessment will provide the input to the final synthesis section in what will then become a Holocene Special Review, scheduled for publication by Arnold in 2000. The first tranche of funding to support travel costs has been provided by PAGES. I am coordinating the project and will be applying to the US National Science Foundation for further support. This will be a demanding but very exciting undertaking and the product will be a milestone in our understanding of high-resolution Holocene climates.

Multi-Millennial tree-ring chronologies in high-latitude Siberia: reconstructing Holocene temperatures and recent biomass changes (INTAS-97-1418)
This project has only recently been agreed under the auspices of the International Association for the Promotion of Cooperation with Scientists from the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (INTAS). It was a joint submission between myself and a Swiss colleague, Dr F.H. Schweingruber - primarily to support our ongoing collaboration with two Russian institutions in Ekaterinburg and Krasnoyarsk. It will run for two years, starting in late 1998. Though this grant only amounts to a total of 60,000 ECU, the 50,000 that will go to Russia represents a very significant underpinning of the work there, particularly given the deteriorating state of the current Russian economy. We received earlier funding from INTAS to establish the first tree-ring densitometric facility in Russia at Krasnoyarsk,. These institutions are currently sub-contractors to the current ADVANCE-10K project (see earlier). I view this collaboration as an essential springboard for further development of Russian dendroclimatology in the next decade. Such a development is vital if we are to succeed in the essential task of building a dense network of long tree-ring chronologies across Eurasia and the N. Hemisphere. One aspect of this particular work that should be emphasised here is its concentration on collecting necessary new tree-ring data and their interpretation in

Previously I had thought that a long comment might be causing it. But in view of the two above, perhaps not.

Martin A, squarespace may be altering their algorithm so that it might have been true, but is no longer.
I'm not saying that is the case (I suspect it is not the case),but we are still left up in the air as to what they are doing.

Seeing as I currently have little else to comment on, other than Raff's Ramblings, I'll see if the preview function will still get medieval on me after a(nother) post with three previews. Absence of further comment by me in the next few minutes would indicate that that is still the case.

Yes it did. Now posting without attempting preview.

So it does now appear to be (largely) preview related.