Summerhayes Email 1

ACE Steering Group meeting, no. 2
2pm-6pm, Wednesday, 7^th December 2005
Argent Hotel, Civic room
San Francisco

Emails from Colin Summerhayes to MJS re: China's involvement in ACE

Martin,
in reply to your question, here's an extract from my earlier e-mail to you:

"Yesterday I visited PRIC. At Dome A they have already drilled to 180m. In 2007 they plan to drill to 300m. After that they plan to go to basement, possibly in conjunction with the Japanese. What they are doing, and what they propose to do will make a major contribution to the goals of ACE. They want to do this in an international context but don't know how to attract partners.

I suggested to them that if they volunteered their Dome A drilling as part of ACE, then it would immediately have as partners all those involved in ACE.

So, when you are here discussing the UK-China bilateral arrengements, I hope you will take time to folllow this idea up with the Director-General of PRIC, Zhanhai Zhang, who is a SCAR vice President.

It also occurred to me that since the Chinese are embarked on this major drilling campaign, it would not go amiss for you to co-opt one of them onto the ACE Steering Committee (perhaps Zhang himself, or the science project leader for the drilling). He might not be able to make much of a contribution at the beginning, but ought to be able to do so as the project moves along. This would dig us out of this hole that we are in with so few Asian reps on any of our Steering Committees. And what do you have to lose?"

Anyway, if you like I can broach the following possibilities to Prof Zhang: (i) I can suggest to him that if he is willing, SCAR is prepared to list their Dome A drilling activity as a specific contribution to ACE. (ii) if we make such an offer, then we will need to ask them to nominate someone to be a liaison point between ACE and their drilling programme; (iii) we would need to consider whether or not that person should be an official member of the SC, or present on the SC in some other capacity (e.g. "representative of Dome A drilling programme"). (iv) alternatively, we could leave out steps ii and iii and ask Zhang to supply the names and CVs of two possible candidates for the ACE Steering Committee, ensuring that those people are very actively involved in Dome A drilling and in scientific projects related to ACE goals. It will then be up to us to evaluate the names and CVs.

Your thoughts?
Colin

Martin I can't seem to find the note I thought I sent that contained two names of Chinese possible candidates for ACE:

(i) Ren Jiawen, from Lanzhou. He is IPCC coordination lead author. A glaciologist. (ii) Li Yuang Sheng. He is the leader of the Dome A drilling project.