WCRP OSC was a very large conference, mainly poster based.
The sheer volume of posters was over-whelming. Plenary talks were generally very good, whereas the parallel sessions were a mixed bag with a number of real gems. Being talked at for ten hours a day is too long though and interest inevitably wanes. Wireless connections certainly aren't a help in that regard allowing people to attend without really truly being in attendance. I was presenting four posters
across two sessions (one on my other 'hobby' - the GCOS Reference Upper Air Network) on the Tuesday morning and giving a talk on the surface temperature initiative the Tuesday
afternoon.
I warmed up for this by asking a question in the c.2000
attendee observations plenary session first thing on Tuesday - nerve wracking in its own right. Two of the
plenary speakers had bemoaned the lack of agreement between estimates for many
variables and stated to be ‘scared’. I pointed out that this was an inevitable
consequence of making measurements that were not traceable to measurement standards
and that I was instead encouraged to see multiple estimates as this was the
only way we could ascertain what could / could not be said. None of the
speakers responded so either it was an awful point to make or they did not wish
to respond.
I spent the majority of the poster time around the three
surface temperature initiative posters. Like many of the posters they were in a
corner but there was still reasonable interest and a number of potential data
leads were identified. Roughly half of the 50 data request cover letters and
data submission guidelines hardcopies were taken. Most of the discussants were
supportive although inevitably some raised the Berkeley effort and whether this
now obviated the need for the initiative as a whole. This gave an opportunity
to clarify the holistic nature of the enterprise and how the Berkeley effort,
if published(!), would simply constitute one important contributing component.
It was stressed that science and society are interested in more than the global
centennial timescale trend and that differences would be greater at smaller
space and timescales. It was also stressed that consistent benchmarking was
necessary to understand differences more robustly. See also Steve Easterbrook's take on the poster that he was presenting on benchmarking.
The afternoon talk was given in a parallel session with
probably 300-500 people (it felt like the latter!) in attendance. It was a
little bit rabbit in the headlights for the first half although better towards
the end. There were at least three (maybe four) questions from the floor. There
were then several people who had questions after the end of the session that
kept me busy for the full half hour coffee break and beyond. These gave a
chance for a much smaller audience to expand on various aspects – especially
crowdsourcing. Questions regarding whether data holdings known to a given
individual were already there highlighted the need to clarify that we wished to
get hold of any and all data and that the databank processing will be designed
to account for such redundancy in an open and transparent way. Regardless, a
concatenated master-list of current holdings at stage 2 level was requested.
This has now been added to the databank prototype.
