Dear Colleagues:

The 15th PACLIM Workshop has been scheduled for April 27-30, 1998, at the Wrigley Marine Institute at Two Harbors, Santa Catalina Island, California. The workshop considers multidisciplinary issues of climate variability from weather to geological time scales with a focus on Pacific and the western Americas. This year's theme session will be "1997-98: El Nino of the Century?" with retrospectives of the summer and winter's events and impacts, as well as some discussion of the relative significance of this year's El Nino in paleo-and historical contexts. Most of the first full day (April 28th) will be devoted to this theme, but the rest of the workshop will be devoted to contributed oral and poster presentations covering the many aspects of climate that have become the hallmark of PACLIM Workshops.

This letter represents notice of the schedule and location of the Workshop this year, so that you can mark your calendars. A subsequent notice will include the call for abstracts and registration materials, with an abstract deadline of April 5th. However, in the short term, please know that lodging and meals will be provided from funding by the Wrigley Foundation, with some travel support available from several sponsors. An $80 registration fee will be required to help defray expenses for the Workshop. Due to the constraints of lodging at the Wrigley Marine Institute, a maximum of about 100 participants will be admitted, and you will be expected to share a room.

Students are encouraged to attend and present their research. Most oral presentations will be allotted approximately 20 minutes. Longer invited talks will be given in the special theme session. Because there will not be sufficient time for everyone to give a talk, we will ask that you consider the poster format for highlighting your research. Poster sessions are particularly effective at PACLIM workshops because they stay up in the break areas throughout the meeting.

For now, additional information can be obtained from Janice Tomson, Long Beach City College at (562) 938-4448 or jtomson@mail.lbcc.cc.ca.us.

We look forward to seeing you at this year's Workshop.

Sincerely,

Mike Dettinger
Janice Tomson
Ray Wilson
Dan Cayan
Lowell Stott