Spreadsheet of Review Comments for additional review period of IPCC assessment.

Dear Mr Palmer,

I am writing to you in accordance with the Environmental
Information Regulations 2004 and the Information Commissioners
Decision Notice FER0085500, which stated:

“The Commissioner considers that the phrase “any information… on…”
should be interpreted widely and that this is in line with the
purpose expressed in the first recital of the Council Directive
2003/4/EC. Therefore ‘any information on’ will usually include
information concerning, about or relating to a particular measure,
activity, or factor in question. In other words information that
would inform the public about the matter under consideration and
would therefore facilitate effective participation by the public in
environmental decision making is likely to be environmental
information. This approach was informed by the Information Tribunal
case Ofcom v Information Commissioner and T-Mobile UK Limited
(EA/2006/0078).”

The matter, which I seek to be informed about, is a very specific
aspect of the Working Group One contribution to the IPCC, 2007
Fourth Assessment Report for which Professor Keith Briffa was a
Lead Author. The Chapter 6 in question dealt with the estimation of
historic temperatures, which I hope we can agree are states of the
environment, which are covered by Regulation 2(1)(a). I also
believe my request covered by Regulation 2(1)(c) and (e)

Appendix A to the ‘Principles Governing IPCC Work’ require that:

“All written expert, and government review comments will be made
available to reviewers on request during the review process and
will be retained in an open archive in a location determined by the
IPCC Secretariat on completion of the Report for a period of at
least five years.”

Accordingly I believe this information should have been proactively
disseminated under Regulation 4.

On 28 July 2006 at 6:32 PM UEA/CRU received an email from Jonathan
Overpeck, to which a spreadsheet was attached “listing: the
submitter, file name of the paper, its acceptance date, and the
chapter and section which the submitter feels is relevant.” These
were expert comments received pursuant to an email sent to
Reviewers on 5 July 2006, soliciting additional reviewers comments.

Please send me an electronic copy of the spreadsheet.

For your convenience I have appended the email of 28 July 2006 with
personal email addresses removed.
Yours sincerely,

David Holland

*From:* Jonathan Overpeck <mailto:xxxx@xxxxxxxx>
*To:* [email address]
<mailto:[email address]>
*Sent:* Friday, July 28, 2006 6:32 PM
*Subject:* [Wg1-ar4-ch06] Fwd: Additional In-Press Papers

Hi Chap 6 LA's - here is another batch of papers from the
TSU to be considered using the guidelines provided below
- we don't want to add citations just to make our ref
list more complete.

Thanks, Peck and Eystein

X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 2.2
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 11:25:25 -0600
From: IPCC-WG1 <[email address]
<mailto:[email address]>>
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en

To: Jonathan Overpeck <xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx>,
Eystein Jansen <xxxxx.xxxxx@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Additional In-Press Papers

Dear CLAs

Please find attached additional paper(s) that are
relevant to your chapter and have been submitted in
response to our most recent guidelines for
consideration of papers published in 2006 following
the expert and government review. A separate
spreadsheet file is attached listing: the submitter,
file name of the paper, its acceptance date, and the
chapter and section which the submitter feels is
relevant.

As discussed in Bergen, please note the following:
* inclusion of additional papers in the final draft
should not open up any substantive issues that were
not in the second draft and so not previously reviewed;
* additional papers should only be used where in the
view of the LAs doing so provides a more balanced
coverage of scientific views;
* we anticipate that a quick reading of the abstract
of each paper will enable a decision consistent with
this and we would not encourage any lengthy
consideration by the LA team.

One additional point to keep in mind is that this
most recent adjustment of our publication deadlines
should not be perceived by others as a device for
allowing the LAs to reference more of their own
papers. We trust that you and your team will be both
objective and vigilant when deciding to include or
reject papers in this respect.

Best regards,
WG1 TSU