From: Jonathan Overpeck To: Darrell Kaufman , David Schneider , Nick McKay , Caspar Ammann , Bradley Ray , Keith Briffa , Miller Giff , Otto-Bleisner Bette , Jonathan Overpeck Subject: Re: Your Science manuscript 1173983 at revision Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 12:22:57 -0700 Hi Darrell et al - got a chance to read the paper and comments enroute to Atlanta. Here's some feedback.. General - comments are modest and should be easy to accommodate. That said, I think we have to take the comments of Rev 2 seriously. I'm guessing that its Francis Zwiers and in any case, he knows what he's talking about regarding stats. Also - IMPORTANT - I'd make sure we check and recheck every single calculation and dataset. This paper is going to get the attention of the skeptics and they are going to get all the data and work hard to show were we messed up. We don't want this - especially you, since it could take way more of your time than you'd like, and it'll look bad. VERY much worth the effort in advance. Ok Rev 1 - wow - never had it so good. Rev 2 General comment - we should take this one seriously. Get Caspar and Bette's help. The new synthesis could be telling us (especially when the outlier in Fig 4B is discounted - see below) that the Arctic is, in reality, more sensitive to changes in radiative forcing than reflected in the model. Are there other experiments or reasons to think this is true? If so, let's make this point and back it up with these other pieces of evidence. For example, does the CCSM get Arctic warming from the earl/mid Holocene to present correctly? Does the model underestimate the Arctic change obs over the last 100 years. Since the reviewer raised this, you could add some refs and prose if needed to respond. Not a lot, but some. And, we need to respond one way or the other. Specific comments 1. agree, in the abstract, I suggest changing the sentence to read "This trend likely reflects a steady orbitally-driven reduction in summer insolation, as confirmed by a 1000-year transient climate simulation." Note that this removes more than enough words to meet the eds requirement too. 2. for this one, I'd simply state that the forcing is stronger in the Arctic than at lower lats (double check how much) and also add what Giff suggested. 3. agree, make the suggested clarification 4. important (!) and hopefully easy. I leave to whomever did the calculation to make sure any serial correlation bias was taken into account. Make sure all p values are thus corrected. 5. ditto, makes sense too 6. clarify 7. this reviewer knows what he/she is talking about - do what they suggest, and double check it's done well. 8. Don't delete the para. Instead point out that you've strengthened it and that it is important to place the new synthesis in a longer term Holocene context. It also clarifies to interdisciplinary readers why the Arctic is so sensitive (perhaps more sensitive than in models? - see above). That said, I would cite Kerwin et al 99 - I've attached it. It provides added detail and balance. Also, since you're responding to a reviewer comment and strengthening the ms, you can add the ref w/o hassle (or so I'm guessing on recent experience). 9. yep, delete all "attribution"s in the ms. On p 6, lone 129, can say "...support the connection between the Arctic summer cooling trend and a orbitally-driven reduction..." 10) reviewer is correct - see my response above for the general comment, and see if you can work with his/her ideas to improve. The outlier has to be just that?! Need an explanation before you can remove from any analysis, however. 11) makes sense - do it 12) yep - change text as suggested 13) agree, change p 7, line 153 to read "...1980s appears to have been the single..." 14) agree, change line 167 on p 8 to read "...trend. Our new synthesis suggests that the most recent 10-year..." Other suggested changes.... P. 3 line 69 - change region to read regional P 6 line 128 - "(-2600 to -1600AD) isn't going to make sense to readers. Please provide some context - SOM or ?? P 7 line 145 - insert "Arctic" before "summer" P. 11 line 234 change to read "...century. Ten-year means (bold lines) were used..." Because you don't really say what the bold and unbold lines are - this will help the reader make sure they have it right. Fig 4 and caption - need to explain why the isolation axes are labeled differently - the numbers, and that both are still cover the same number of Wm-2. Didn't look at SOM, but make sure it's all bomber too, since there is a good chance it will get PICKED apart, and any errors thrown back in our face in a counter productive manner. Thanks! Nice job. Best, Peck (probably w/o email for a while in the Amazon, although one never knows...) On 5/26/09 1:08 PM, "Darrell Kaufman" <[1][e-mail]> wrote: Co-authors: I just received the reviewers' comments and editor's decision on our SCIENCE manuscript (attached). The decision isn't final, but it looks like good news, with very reasonable revisions. Reviewer #1 had nothing substantial to suggest. Reviewer #2 was rather thorough. I think I can address his/her suggestions but could use some help with three: (1) The reviewer challenged our assertion that, because climate change is amplified in the Arctic, the signal:noise ratio should be higher too. We don't have more than 1 sentence to expand on the assertion in the text. We could plead the case to editor and hope that it doesn't trip up the final acceptance, or we could omit it from the text. Suggestions? (2) The reviewer suggested that, if we are concerned about outliers influencing the mean values of the composite record, we should attempt a so-called "robust" regression procedure, such as median absolute deviation regression. Does anyone have experience with this? (3) The reviewer was concerned that we overestimated the strength of the relation between temperature and insolation in the long CCSM simulation. Namely s/he criticized the leveraging effect of the one outlier in the model-generated insolation vs temperature plot (Fig. 4b), and suggested that we use 10-year means instead of 50 year. Dave: you up for this, please? Please forward any input to me and I'll compile them, and let you all have a look before I submit the final revisions. I'm hoping we can turn this around this week. Thanks. Darrell Begin forwarded message: From: Lisa Johnson <[2][e-mail]> Date: May 26, 2009 12:25:40 PM GMT-07:00 To: Darrell S Kaufman <[3][e-mail]> Subject: Your Science manuscript 1173983 at revision 26 May 2009 Dr. Darrell S Kaufman Department of Geology Frier Hall Knoles Dr Northern Arizona University Box 4099 Flagstaff, AZ 86011 UserID: 1173983 Password: 307923 Dear Dr. Kaufman: Thank you for sending us your manuscript "Recent Warming Reverses Long-Term Arctic Cooling." We are interested in publishing the paper as a Report, but we cannot accept it in its present form. Please revise your manuscript in accord with the referees' comments (pasted below) and as indicated on the attached editorial checklist and marked manuscript. I have also made some suggestions regarding shortening and clarification directly on the manuscript. Because of the nature of the reviewers' comments and revisions required, we may send the revised manuscript back for further review. 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Sincerely, Jesse Smith, Ph.D. Senior Editor ___________________________________________________________________________________ [cid:3326358178_1079548] ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ [cid:3326358178_1100494] ___________________________________________________________________________________ Jonathan T. Overpeck Co-Director, Institute for Environment and Society Professor, Department of Geosciences Professor, Department of Atmospheric Sciences Mail and Fedex Address: Institute of the Environment 715 N. 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