[jules' pics] 9/30/2010 12:27:00 PM

rowing on the Cam, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

My recurring dreams are usually about exam taking or rowing, presumably from having done too much of both in my youth. In this particular dream, I was sitting behind James in the middle "powerhouse" part of the boat. Twice we raced and beat the Master's boat. And then we had lunch in the sun.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 9/30/2010 12:27:00 PM

New supercomputer

The new Japanese petaflop supercomputer is just starting to be physically built. This one isn't primarily for climate change, but will probably mostly target biotechnology. We might get to play on a corner of it. Assuming we are still here, of course. Nothing is certain in the uncertainty group :-)

[jules' pics] j&J's' International Tour of parts of the West of England #4

Hmmm...The view from the ancestral home and Kirkby Lonsdale's famous Ruskin's View (admired by Ruskin but painted by Turner).

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 9/29/2010 05:01:00 AM

[jules' pics] Jules' and James' International Tour of parts of the We...

On the roof, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

The ancestral home did, however, need some repair. Luckily no one fell off the roof so Pop was able to celebrate his 80th birthday the next day in style. Is the key to a long life, perhaps, climbing on the roof only when it isn't raining? We have often marvelled at the number of typhoon deaths in Japan that are the result of pensioners wandering out on their roofs in the height of the storm.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 9/28/2010 05:55:00 AM

Global temp update

Another month of data...in fact two months for the ENSO statistics:

These 3m centered means lag reality by quite a long way - the current index (27 Sept) is about -1.5. The red line should track the blue one quite closely for the rest of the year, I think. And here is the updated temperature, which is still rising (in terms of 12m lagged average) but not by much:

Here I'm using the 3v version of the data (which I prefer), the non-v version also has August data in and these are clearly cooler, so things are likely to head downhill from here.

Chris R suggested that it might have been better to show year-to-date values rather than 12m lagged average. I chose the latter partly due to Hansen's discussion (pdf here) where he argues that 12m rolling averages are more scientifically relevant, as there is nothing special about the year end that justifies focussing on this calendar period to the exclusion of (say) May-April. I suspect this issue only piqued his interest due to the fact that the 1998 calendar year temp was also so close to the max of any 12m period (as you can see from the above pic), so the calendar year 1998 shows up as particularly hot on the standard annual (calendar year) data plot.

Yes we Kan (spend more money that we don't have)

Well the IMF is full of praise for the Tory slash-n-burn, which is a sure sign that they are working hard to make the rich richer and poor poorer, but over in Japan, it seems that there is still plenty of spending to be done. Kan has just beaten off a leadership challenge from the hated Ozawa, so probably feels duty-bound to make a statement in the only way that Japanese PMs know how.

It doesn't make much sense to me, as the talk in Japan has also been of budget cuts, but the first sign of starting to understand Japan is to recognise that you don't understand it at all, so I may be closing in on enlightenment. Anyway, if any British scientists find themselves looking for work in a few weeks or months, there would be worse places to look than Japan...

(Amusing to see ol' Krebsy featuring in that article about brain drain - he visited us in POL while he was Chief Exec of NERC, and it was jules' question about the dire state of UK science, or more precisely the reaction of some senior management to her daring to raise her voice in public to say what we junior ranks were all thinking in private, that ultimately precipitated our move to Japan. I must remember to thank him on Wednesday! More of the same from Krebs here, including a radio interview.)

[jules' pics] 9/27/2010 03:17:00 AM

cereal, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

Over the last decade the British public have finally accepted the essential nature of chocolate in the diet, and almost all breakfast cereals are now fortified with vitamins, minerals and chocolatey goodness.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 9/27/2010 03:17:00 AM

Duvet Day

Got back from our international tour of parts of the west of England just in time to come down with a streaming cold over the weekend. Lucky it didn't happen during the tour which was a bit of whirlwind of travel and talking. I'm not sure quite what the Exeter workshop achieved in terms of concrete outcomes but it's certainly been very useful for us to travel around and see a whole lot of people, and the informal conversations have been interesting. One minor point that I was interested to note at the workshop was that some other people rubbished the concept of a truth-centred ensemble, apparently independently of our work (well they certainly didn't credit us with anything...). So it will be interesting to see how that plays out in the coming months and years, coming so hot on the heels of the IPCC's apparent endorsement of this approach.

Today we decided to try out a bit of traditional UK culture and sat in front of the telly watching the F1 race. Are there people who really do this every week? Fortunately there's the X Factor tonight to look forward to...

[jules' pics] Jules' and James' International Tour of parts of the West of En...

After the long journey up north we recuperated at my ancestral home. Luckily (from the maintenance point of view) this is not it.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 9/26/2010 08:45:00 AM

[jules' pics] Jules' and James' International Tour of parts of the West of En...

The first place we stopped on the way was a Little Chef. In the last decade Little Chef has become very red indeed, while froth and chocolate has been added to the top of the hogwash. The cooked breakfasts looked quite good, but we didn't try one as we were already getting very fat from British food.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 9/25/2010 05:37:00 AM