Quite a bit different from their November 24th statement, which you can read here. For those that still think Climategate has no significant impact on climate science, this revelation tells another story.
Met Office to re-examine 160 years of climate data
The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.
The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN’s main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world. This assessment is the basis for next week’s climate change talks in Copenhagen aimed at cutting CO2 emissions.
The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.
The Met Office works closely with the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), which is being investigated after e-mails written by its director, Phil Jones, appeared to show an attempt to manipulate temperature data and block alternative scientific views.
The Met Office’s published data showing a warming trend draws heavily on CRU analysis. CRU supplied all the land temperature data to the Met Office, which added this to its own analysis of sea temperature data.
Since the stolen e-mails were published, the chief executive of the Met Office has written to national meteorological offices in 188 countries asking their permission to release the raw data that they collected from their weather stations.
The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct. However, it says it wants to create a new and fully open method of analysing temperature data.
The development will add to fears that influential sceptics in other countries, including the US and Australia, are using the controversy to put pressure on leaders to resist making ambitious deals for cutting CO2.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change admitted yesterday that it needed to consider the full implications of the e-mails and whether they cast doubt on any of the evidence for man-made global warming.
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“influential sceptics in other countries” I wonder who that could be?
I applaud the open process though.
Wow,
BBC now says Met office DENIES the 3 year examination claim and expects to release the RAW temperature data ” this week” , um, provided 188 countries agree. The Met office says this release will “prove” global warming.
SO – no data until after Copenhagen, but TRUST US, this transparent process will “prove” global warming – after the skeptics have taken 3 years to correct and process it. Mind you, if the Skeptics do not find global warming they will then just be classed as Deniers, and accused of Scientific Fraud.
This is great news.
Hey Anthony – thanks for the NOAA PDF links. It was moving to pull up weather records from 1893 for a weather station that still exists.
Maybe we could do OCR on these things and reconstruct the dataset with software. Of course the results would need to be inspected but you could also have the software try to detect bad OCR conversions with various sanity checks.
Of course it wouldn’t have the normal provenance of peer-review but if you had the dataset and people could verify it against the PDFs maybe that would be enough?
It looks like we might have a real “face-off” and this time at center ice.
If the Met Office is sincere then I wholeheartedly support their proposal. If they truly are going to be open then will need to have neutrality.
This means that all procedures and code must be reviewed by outside experts, not just climate scientists or meteorologists. Any statistics will need to be reviewed by statisticians, and any computer code by programmers. Anything less will look compromised and almost certainly will be considered a white wash.
I doesn’t surprise me that politicians are reluctant to follow the Met Office path. They are ones who allowed the CRU to get away with their shenanigans and are therefore as guilty as Jones and Mann in this scandal.
The three years it will take for this process is just long enough for tempers to calm and egos to deflate. It will matter not a whit to the climate (unless one believes in the most alarmist crede).
The US needs to do the same. They also need to stop the presses on the alarmist meme until this is completed.
The UN cannot be trusted, period.
If at the end of the process, the weight of data supports one side or the other, the governments can and should follow the course that is indicated.
Aha!
The Met bureau will publish the RAW data, but only for 1,000 weather stations.
These will presumably be selected to “prove” global warming, because the Met Bureau has already announced ( in advance of the release that this will prove global warming.
If I had to name two people who have done the most to bring this house-of-cards down, they would be Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre. I may be bald, but I’m not going to wear a hat anytime tomorrow. THANK YOU and YOUR MODERATORS/HELPERS.
Reed Coray
This is good.. but it also casts further obfuscation on the entire issue.
The ‘big deal’ is not so much the data and ‘proof of warming’. We KNOW and most of us acknowledge some warming. But beyond that. ….. unethical behavior removed any possibility that the findings of the IPCC can be viewed as having any level of integrity. The level is NONE at all.
Jones, Briffa, Mann, etc. prevented valid science which contradicted, at least in part, the effect of man’s CO2 emissions from consideration in the equation. They are also the key players and authors of the IPCC reports, They also improperly interpreted and or misrepresented the conclusions of work done by others, in some cases causing scientists to QUIT participating in the IPCC. The Met’s review will not change that.
The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct.
This time we’ll do it right…..promise!
Ah yes, the wonderful Met Office who rebranded their Weather website and called it Weather and Climate Change to get the pennies rolling in.
I suspect there are some fairly large portions of humble pie being served up at the moment. Pride comes before a hack.
It is quite amusing to see how the anti-science have developed.
First these emails meant nothing.
Then they were being taken out of context
But wait, there was then an inquiry – so there must be something in it?
So now it seems the warmlings expectation is for a whitewash – I’ve already seen plenty of baiting as if the conclusion of the report is settled in stone. They feel it’s being done by one of “theirs”. They might be due a surprise here too.
And now what the true scientists have been saying all along, that the surface network is trash, has been confirmed as correct thanks to this (for once much needed) revisionism by the MetO.
Fascinating stuff, but I’ll have to replenish my stockpiles of popcorn at this rate.
This last few weeks have been like I’ve been transported to a parallel universe where the right thing sometimes does happen.
Just found this on Iain Dales website
at http://iaindale.blogspot.com/
under “What Happens When You Disagree With Climate Change Fundamentalists”
Refers to Sky news debate (if that’s the word) here…
This project will take three years worth of funding (money keeps rolling in, baby!) and they’ll spit back out the same flawed ideas and untrustworthy temp series.
Michael (20:53:32) :
“Those on the inside are reading unreleased e-mails. Methinks they came across some more seriously damaging crap they are not telling us about.”
If only!
I’ll only believe the Met Office figures if they square with what the GHCN passes off as raw numbers.
I seem to recall that St. Mac had a link somewhere to a zip file over om CA.
Also, if they compare,say, with those New Zealand raw numbers.
“With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn’t be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics. We know the science. We know what we must do.”
evanmjones (21:57:38) :
Never before have I had the good fortune to laugh so hard that milk came out of my nose, yet you have provided me with the rare opportunity to enjoy this phenomenon. If only I had been drinking milk at the time, I would not be wondering if I should call the Guinness Book of World Records. If I do, sir, your name shall live forever.
WOW!!! This is quite telling. It means that those now examining the state of everything that went on have absolutely no confidence that things were done properly. If this is done honestly and in the open, then, whatever the results, I’m all for it!
Isn’t it convenient that the analysis (whitewash) will not be completed until the next U.S. Presidential Election year.
And despite all this, something is still rotten in Denmark… Copenhagen to be exact. The AGW movement is about money and power, not science. Even when holes are shot in the science, and proof of fraud is revealed, the AGW train will not be derailed. The rich and powerful are backing it, and they will not be denied. There is a more sinister agenda than environmentalism behind the AGW movement. The exact nature of this agenda won’t be fully revealed until after the tools that they need are in place (Cap and Trade and similar taxation and freedom restrictive laws). I believe that this issue is much deeper than the propaganda.
I don’t think people understand. The Met Office has rescinded the 3 year study now and instead they will release the RAW Data for just 1,000 specially selected Weather stations Next Week to finally prove Global Warming beyond any doubt.
David: Yer check’s in the mail.
Well I Know BBC spin when I see it.
Apparently the Met Office was to release this data shortly.
A MO spokesman denies that it had been concealed or that it had anything to do with Climategate, or that that the Gov’t had put any pressure on the MO on the matter and further that there was no question of a 3 yr reappraisal,
Really? That is not what the Times of London says, and if they did not get it from the horse;s mouth I would be much surprised.
Particularly given the current editor’s green approach.
It sounds like a genuine scoop to me with urgent damage limitation via the BBC.
We shall see: only time will tell.
Kindest Regards.
“Met has preconceived notions, but they also say it will take them three years to examine things.”
How convenient, most people will have either been assimilated by then, senile, or don’t care anymore.
Without some authentication I wouldn’t trust the data they release further than I could throw a toilet and a few gigs of data ran through a value-added grinder.
They could start to build some legitimacy by providing some evidence for this bare arse claim:
“[Met] had already planned to publish the material long before the “Climategate” controversy broke.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8396696.stm
OW!
“With 20,000 delegates, advocates and journalists jetting to Copenhagen for planet Earth’s last chance, the carbon footprint of the global warming summit will be the only impressive consequence of the climate-change meeting.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/04/AR2009120403073.html
OT, saw this over at tigerhawk yesterday:
“From a connected and very hard core environmentalist among my Facebook friends (lighten up, guys, she was in my RA group in college 30 years ago):
Good news! Obama will go to CPH on 18th, not 9th. Also expect major announcement re: EPA on Monday.”