What's going on? CRU takes down Briffa Tree Ring Data and more

Odd things are going on at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

Widely available data, existing in the public view for years,  is now disappearing from public view.

For example this link to Keith Briffa’s Yamal data:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/

Now redirects to a generic page of UEA. Try it yourself.

Now here is what that page says:

Climatic Research Unit

Due to the present high volume of visitors to this page, you will shortly be directed to the latest news about CRU on the main University of East Anglia website, or you can go there immediately by clicking on this link.

The cached page at Google is still available here, though none of the links to data or papers works there either.

I’ll point out that if indeed “traffic” is a concern, redirecting to another page on the UEA server system doesn’t do much for the load, it just moves it around. The data files are mostly text, and not that large, they don’t have that much more impact that some wab pages with graphics.

The news page that you get redirected to hasn’t much to say, and has not been updated since December 3rd.

And it’s not just subfolders with data, it is the entire Climate Research Unit website that is shielded from public view. Try the main link which has been functional for years:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk

In the last press release issued by UEA we read:

Professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor said: “The reputation and integrity of UEA is of the upmost importance to us all.

So now apparently, in this newly pledged period of “openness and transparency”, with the promise of releasing new data access, such as the Met office has done here:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/subsets.html

The access to  important CRU data is simply denied?

That’s a hell of a way to build public trust.

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