Volume 1

The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia : eighth report of session 2009-10.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Science and Technology
Date:
2010
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia : eighth report of session 2009-10. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    scrutiny. Ultimately, these ideas are put up to the threat of falsification by other scientists working in the field. 22. In this Chapter we discuss some aspects of this process. Context 23. There are three main international climate datasets, which have been built up from direct temperature measurements on land and sea at weather stations all around the world: a) the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Asheville, North Carolina, USA; b) the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), part of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) in New York, USA; and c) CRUTEM3, at CRU, UEA.” 24. In addition, there are two others, one in Russia and one in Japan, that use similar methods.* There are also two that use satellite observations, by the University of Alabama at Huntsville and by Remote Sensing Systems, California.” 25. Professor Jones, commenting on the different climate research groups around the world in the UK, US, Russia and Japan,” told us that: we are all working independently so we may be using a lot of common data but the way of going from the raw data to a derived product of gridded temperatures and then the average for the hemisphere and the globe is totally independent between the different groups.” 26. What sets the CRU dataset apart is its comprehensiveness: The CRU dataset, which forms the land surface component of the HadCRUT global temperature record, was compiled with the aim of comprehensiveness. The majority of the data in it are derived from the same freely-available raw data sets used by NOAA and NASA. However, it also includes data derived from station data that were obtained directly from countries, institutions and scientists on the understanding that they would not be passed on.”’ Complaints and accusations 27. The complaints and accusations made against CRU in relation to the scientific process come under two broad headings. The first is transparency: that CRU failed to abide by best 32 Ev 21, para 4.2 33 Q78 34 Ev 104 [D.R. Keiller], para 2 35 6 Q79 36 Q80 37 Ev 64 [John Beddington and Julia Slingo]
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