Data on global climate change comes from
many sources - so even ignoring surface
data from one organisation doesn't change
the outlook from other insitutions, or from
sea temperature and level, water vapour,
satellite temperature monitoring, or snow
and ice cover.
Image: iStockphoto

On or about November 19, 2009, as yet unknown persons hacked into an email server at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in Norwich, U.K.

The CRU is an academic department specializing in climate research and is particularly known for reconstructing past global surface temperatures on the decade to millennium time scales. The CRU is one of four organizations worldwide that have independently compiled thermometer measurements of local temperatures from around the world to reconstruct the history of average global surface temperature for the past 130 ‐ 150 years.

The other groups are in the United States (NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center ¹ and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies ²) and Japan (Japan Meteorological Agency ³). From a much larger number of emails, the hackers selected and posted more than 1000 on a publicly accessible file server in Russia.

The vast majority of the 1000+ emails are routine and unsuspicious. Perhaps one or two dozen of the email exchanges give the appearance of controversy, though no unethical behavior has yet been documented. Professor Phil Jones, director of the CRU, was involved in most of these email exchanges. He has temporarily stepped down as the CRU director pending the outcome of an independent investigation instigated by the university.

Although a small percentage of the emails are impolite and some express animosity toward opponents, when placed into proper context they do not appear to reveal fraud or other scientific misconduct by Dr. Jones or his correspondents. The most common accusations of misconduct center around two general themes:

1. Purported mishandling and/or suppression of data:

• In an email dated Nov. 12, 1999, Prof. Phil Jones stated that he had used a “trick” to “hide the decline.” The email does not say what decline he was talking about, so it has been widely misreported that he was hiding a decline in temperatures. Those reports are not correct, nor is it accurate to say that he was actually hiding data, even though he chose the word. The word “trick” was used as it is in common parlance to mean a clever solution to a problem (e.g., “I know a trick to get that stain off your shirt.”). The decline he said he was hiding referred to one series of high‐latitude tree ring data from 1960 to 1994 that did not follow measured temperatures at the same locations, even though they had followed measured temperatures for about a century before 1960. That set of tree ring data incorrectly implied a downward temperature trend after 1960. It cannot be said that Jones was literally hiding this fact because two years before he wrote this email he was a co‐author on the first paper to document this “divergence” issue. That paper, published in Nature in February of 1998, concluded publicly that these post‐1960 tree ring data produce inaccurate temperature estimates. ⁴ Hence, “hiding” this decline simply meant following the advice that Jones and colleagues had already aired in the peer‐reviewed literature two years earlier. Many more papers have since been published on the same topic.
• The CRU is barred by non‐publication agreements with some countries’ meteorological services from releasing to the public a small amount (less than 5%) of the weather station data the CRU uses to estimate land‐surface temperature trends. The university has confirmed that the CRU is legally barred from releasing these data. A few commentators have used this situation as a basis for accusing the CRU of suppressing data.
• Another data handling accusation involves the admitted deletion of “less than 5%” of weather station data from the CRU surface temperature database in the 1980s. This deletion was not from the original data logs for individual weather stations. Instead, it was only from the database that CRU staff collated for their use in estimating global surface temperatures. The data were deleted because a documented quality control process found them to be of insufficient quality. After the data were rejected, they no longer had scientific value. It is important to note that anyone could still retrieve the original data from the original weather station logs. It is also important to note that this took place in the 1980s, when climate change was purely an academic topic accompanied by none of today’s heated political debate. At the time, the scientists did not foresee the need to archive every bit of data regardless of its scientific value.

2. Purported muzzling of scientists skeptical of human­ induced global warming:

• In several emails the authors complain about certain scientific papers and refer to them as “garbage” or other derogatory descriptions. All scientists complain about papers they judge to be inferior and it is commonplace for individual scientists to insult the work of others in private conversation. While disrespectful, this behavior is not suppression, it is not unethical, and it is by no means limited to papers authored by skeptics of human‐induced climate change.
• There is an email exchange in which the participants contemplate boycotting a particular science journal and refusing to cite two specific papers they regarded as fatally flawed. It is crucial to understand that the authors of the emails were not contemplating the suppression of a dissenting point of view. Rather, they were reacting to what they considered to be scientific misconduct by the authors of the papers and/or by editors who circumvented the peer review process so as to publish inferior papers that support their own political agendas. One case discussed in the emails, and later documented in news reports and open letters from individuals involved in the events, was so egregious that half the journal’s editorial board resigned in protest when the publisher refused to allow the chief editor to revise the peer review process to make individual board members more accountable. ⁵ The publisher later admitted the paper should not have been published and promised to strengthen the peer review process. ⁶ The other paper that the email authors contemplated not citing was published without peer review in an obscure journal, of which the chief editor has admitted to using the journal to push her own political agenda. ⁷

To interpret this correspondence in proper context, one must recognize that science is a community‐based professional enterprise. It is expected and appropriate that investigators choose in which journals to publish and recommend to their peers in which journals to publish or not publish. The notion of organizing a boycott against any journal that repeatedly departs from accepted scientific standards is both reasonable and ethical. Similarly, when writing their individual research papers, scientists are free to use their own judgement to decide which published papers to cite. It is not standard practice to cite all relevant publications, since many are redundant and some lack credibility. In this case, the authors were contemplating the refusal to cite two discredited papers in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. In the end, since IPCC reports are more inclusive and comprehensive than individual research papers, both of the papers were cited and discussed (p. 466 of the Working Group I report cites Soon and Baliunas, 2003 and McIntyre & McKitrick, 2003). ⁸

The University of East Anglia and the United Nations have launched independent investigations into this matter. The following is a news release from the University of East Anglia: ⁹

“Today the University of East Anglia (UEA) announced that Sir Muir Russell KCB FRSE will head the Independent Review into allegations made against the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). “The Independent Review will investigate the key allegations that arose from a series of hacked e‐mails from CRU. The review will:

1. Examine the hacked e‐mail exchanges, other relevant e‐mail exchanges and any other information held at CRU to determine whether there is any evidence of the manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice and may therefore call into question any of the research outcomes.

2. Review CRU’s policies and practices for acquiring, assembling, subjecting to peer review and disseminating data and research findings, and their compliance or otherwise with best scientific practice

3. Review CRU’s compliance or otherwise with the University’s policies and practices regarding requests under the Freedom of Information Act (‘the FOIA’) and the Environmental Information Regulations (‘the EIR’) for the release of data. 4. Review and make recommendations as to the appropriate management, governance and security structures for CRU and the security, integrity and release of the data it holds.

“Sir Muir will have the discretion to amend or add to the terms of reference if he feels necessary, devise his own methods of working, and call on appropriate expertise in order to investigate the allegations fully.

“The University has asked for the Review to be completed by Spring 2010 and this will be made public along with UEA’s response.”

The following is an excerpt from a news report in the Guardian newspaper regarding the UN investigation: ¹⁰

“Claims that scientists at the University of East Anglia manipulated global warming data to support a theory of man‐made climate change will be investigated by a United Nations panel, the university chairman said today.

“Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told BBC Radio 4's The Report programme today that the claims were serious and he wanted them investigated.

“‘We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it,’ he said.

“Pachauri, who has chaired the panel since 2002, added: ‘We certainly don't want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail.’”

Although there is no clear evidence of scientific fraud or misconduct at this early stage, if further investigation were to reveal that misconduct had occurred, the scientific consensus regarding human‐induced climate change, as stated by the IPCC, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and virtually every relevant scientific body (see listing below), is not likely to be affected. The data sets involved in the discussions have been reproduced independently by other scientists in other countries and yield similar conclusions. Moreover, the data sets discussed in the emails, while relevant, are not essential to our understanding of contemporary climate change. The two data sets highlighted in accusations of misconduct are very limited and consist of:

• High‐latitude tree ring data that inaccurately suggest that local temperatures declined after 1960; thermometer readings from the same locations demonstrate that the tree rings accurately reflected local temperatures prior to, but not after 1960.
• A small fraction of the weather station data used by the CRU to estimate global surface temperature change (more information below).

The key point is that those data that comprise the most important evidence for human‐induced climate change are not in play in the emails, including those documenting:

• snow and ice cover
• sea level rise
• ocean heat content
• surface temperature records maintained in the U.S. (NASA, NOAA) and Japan (JMA)
• upper and lower atmospheric temperatures monitored by satellites
• atmospheric water vapor
• greenhouse gases
• solar activity
• modeling experiments

As a result, the evidence for rapid warming of the Earth in recent decades remains unequivocal, including:

• Worldwide loss of snow and ice
• Rising sea levels
• Rising global surface temperature

Further, the evidence for human dominance of recent warming remains very strong, including:

• Concomitant warming of the troposphere and cooling of the stratosphere (a greenhouse effect signature)
• Without the strong warming effect of human‐induced rise in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the observed changes in solar activity over the past several decades would have led to a slight cooling of the Earth’s surface.
• Climate models only reproduce the warming of the past 50 years when they include the observed rise in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Endnotes:

1. NCDC Global Surface Temperature Anomalies;
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/index.html

2. GISS Surface Temperature Analysis, http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

3. JMA Global Average Surface Temperature Anomalies,
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/temp/ann_wld.html

4. K.R. Briffa et al. 1998. Reduced sensitivity of recent tree‐growth to temperature at high northern latitudes.
Nature v. 391, pp. 678‐682, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6668/full/391678a0.html

5. Clare Goodess. 2003. Stormy Times for Climate Research. SGR Newsletter 28, November 2003,
http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyTimes_NL28.htm

6. O. Kinne. 2003. Climate Research: an article unleashed worldwide storms. Climate Research v. 24, pp. 197–198,
http://www.int‐res.com/articles/misc/CREditorial.pdf

7. R. Monastersky, 2003, Storm brews over global warming. Chronicle of Higher Education, September 5, 2003,
http://www.arp.harvard.edu/sci/climate/journalclub/ChronicleEd.pdf

8. E. Jansen, J. Overpeck, et al. 2007, Paleoclimate. In (S. Solomon et al., eds.) Climate Change 2007: The Phycial Science Basis. Cambridge University Press. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment‐report/ar4/wg1/ar4‐wg1‐chapter6.pdf, p. 466

9. Sir Muir Russell to head the Independent Review into the allegations against the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), UEA press release, December 3, 2009 http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/dec/CRUreview

10. United Nations panel to examine evidence in leaked climate email case, guardian.co.uk, December 4, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/04/un‐panel‐uae‐hacked‐climate‐email