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.

    17/68 page 13
    Unfortunately, several of these countries impose conditions and say you are not allowed to pass [on the data]. Seven countries have said “No, you cannot”, half the countries have not yet answered, Canada and Poland are amongst those who have said, “No you cannot publish it” and also Sweden. Russia is very hesitant. We are under a commercial promise, as it were, not to; we are longing to publish it because what science needs is the most openness.“ (The issue with Sweden has since been resolved. The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute gave permission for CRU to publish its Swedish data on the UEA website on 8 March 2010.*) 33. Second, as UEA explained in its submission, it is: sometimes necessary to adjust temperature data because changes in station location, instrument or observation time, or in the methods used to calculate monthly average temperatures can introduce false trends. These have to be removed or adjusted, or else the overall series of values will be incorrect. In the early 1980s, CRU painstakingly examined the long-term homogeneity of each station temperature series which it acquired. As a result, data were adjusted for about 11% of the sites, that is approximately 314 sites out of a then-total of some 3,276. This was in complete accordance with standard practice, and all adjustments were documented.” 34. Professor Jones added, when he gave oral evidence: It is all documented [...] what [adjustments we made to the data] in the 1980s and since then we have obviously added more station data as more has become available, as countries have digitised more data; we have added that in and we have reported on that in our peer review publications in 2003 and 2006.” 35. These kinds of adjustments to raw data take a lot of time. That is why, in the words of Professor Jones, “Most scientists do not want to deal with the raw station data, they would rather deal with a derived product”.** 36. A third point was made by Professor Acton that CRU should not be under any obligation to provide raw data: May I also point out that it is not a national archive, it is not a library, it is a research unit. It has no special duty to conserve and its data is the copy of data provided by over 150 countries, whose national meteorological stations turn the data into the average for a month.” 44 Q94 45 Ev 39, para B 46 Ev 18, para 3.4 47 Q8! 48 Q107 49 Q92
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3