2009 Articles

Variability of the American monsoon systems and extremes

Goddard, L. and J.-P. Boulanger

One of the things I have always been conscious of in looking at geophysical data is the question of how representative the data are both in space and time, an issue drummed into me by my first research supervisor. However, the need for caution from this perspective seems to have completely escaped me in the publication on the front cover of the last edition of CLIVAR Exchanges of two pictures showing snow and ice cover on Mount Kilimanjaro. I am grateful therefore to Georg Kaser and Ian Allison who, in their article on pages 7-8, point out that the pictures as published give a very wrong impression of the magnitude of the retreat of glaciers on the mountain. Sean Heuser and Fred Semazzi respond to comments on pages 9-10. Despite its name, this is, I think, almost the first time we have had such an exchange of views in my over 6 years of editing CLIVAR Exchanges and I would like to encourage other such “correspondence”, where appropriate, on articles in the future.