Just over a month after Climategate started, we have breaking news from Climate Audit
Steve McIntyre writes:
The UK Met Office has released a large tranche of station data, together with code.
Only last summer, the Met Office had turned down my FOI request for station data, saying that the provision of station data to me would threaten the course of UK international relations. Apparently, these excuses have somehow ceased to apply.
Last summer the Met Office stated:
The Met Office received the data information from Professor Jones at the University of East Anglia on the strict understanding by the data providers that this station data must not be publicly released. If any of this information were released, scientists could be reluctant to share information and participate in scientific projects with the public sector organisations based in the UK in future. It would also damage the trust that scientists have in those scientists who happen to be employed in the public sector and could show the Met Office ignored the confidentiality in which the data information was provided.
However, the effective conduct of international relations depends upon maintaining trust and confidence between states and international organisations. This relationship of trust allows for the free and frank exchange of information on the understanding that it will be treated in confidence. If the United Kingdom does not respect such confidences, its ability to protect and promote United Kingdom interests through international relations may be hampered…
The Met Office are not party to information which would allow us to determine which countries and stations data can or cannot be released as records were not kept, or given to the Met Office, therefore we cannot release data where we have no authority to do so…
Some of the information was provided to Professor Jones on the strict understanding by the data providers that this station data must not be publicly released and it cannot be determined which countries or stations data were given in confidence as records were not kept. The Met Office received the data from Professor Jones on the proviso that it would not be released to any other source and to release it without authority would seriously affect the relationship between the United Kingdom and other Countries and Institutions.
The Met Office announced the release of “station records were produced by the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre.”
The station data zipfile here is described as a “subset of the full HadCRUT3 record of global temperatures” consisting of:
a network of individual land stations that has been designated by the World Meteorological Organization for use in climate monitoring. The data show monthly average temperature values for over 1,500 land stations…
The stations that we have released are those in the CRUTEM3 database that are also either in the WMO Regional Basic Climatological Network (RBCN) and so freely available without restrictions on re-use; or those for which we have received permission from the national met. service which owns the underlying station data.
I haven’t parsed the data set yet to see what countries are not included in the subset and/or what stations are not included in the subset.
The release was previously reported by Bishop Hill and John Graham-Cumming, who’s already done a preliminary run of the source code made available at the new webpage.
We’ve reported on a previous incident where the Met Office had made untrue statements in order to thwart an FOI request. Is this change of heart an admission of error in at their FOI refusal last summer or has there been a relevant change in their legal situation (as distinct from bad publicity)?
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Congratulations, Steve!
That’s a great step in the right direction.
Best wishes for the Holidays,
Oliver K. Manuel
Nice. I’m wondering if the data had been “homogenized” before release to minimize the CRU shennanigans.
docattheautopsy – I wonder the same thing. There’s been enough devious , underhand stuff happen to make ruling this out somewhat difficult.
According to the met website FAQ’s
(blockquote)The data that we are providing is the database used to produce the global temperature series. Some of these data are the original underlying observations and some are observations adjusted to account for non climatic influences, for example changes in observations methods or site location.
The database consists of the “value added” product that has been quality controlled and adjusted to account for identified non-climatic influences. It is the station subset of this value-added product that we have released. Adjustments were only applied to a subset of the stations so in many cases the data provided are the underlying data minus any obviously erroneous values removed by quality control. The Met Office do not hold information as to adjustments that were applied and so cannot advise as to which stations are underlying data only and which contain adjustments.(/blockquote)
and
(blockquote)The data set of temperatures, which are provided as a gridded product back to 1850 was largely compiled in the 1980s when it was technically difficult and expensive to keep multiple copies of the database.
For IT infrastructure of the time this was an exceedingly large database and multiple copies could not be kept at a reasonable cost. There is no question that anything untoward or unacceptable in terms of best practices at the time occurred.(/blockquote)
Meaning there is a high chance this data set is still largely the “value added” data making verification of the temperatures impossible.
couple of things
1. If you read the FAQ page at the Met office you find out this isn’t the Raw data that CRU used. This is the adjusted data that makes up CRUTEM3 and goes into the HadCRUT Global temp data. John Graham-Cumming in his latest blog post has it plotted against CRUTEM3 and to my eye they look almost identical (very slight differences).
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/12/22/met-office-code.html
2. John Graham-Cumming once he looked at the code released believes this is not the CRU code but code the Met office whipped up just for this release of the subset because of the bug he found in it.
http://www.jgc.org/blog/
Comments by other blog sites say the data is not raw but “value add”. ALso, it’s not all there. Too early to tell yet. In any case, I for one have a lot of suspicion so I hope the analysis involved checking the data to see if it makes sense. One way to do this is to compare it with raw data obtained from other sources.
The measured….methodical….patient approach of M&M strikes again.
Something to be said for the Canadian Scots.
Get ’em boys!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Come on guys – don’t be so skeptical – they have given you a Christmas present.
I was probably made by an “emerging economy”, it will undoubtedly break the first time you use it, it may well poison you if you ingest it, but it was still a nice thought …
Have a happy and safe holiday, and thanks for all the fun.
savethesharks (22:10:25) : “The measured… methodical… patient approach of M&M strikes again. Something to be said for the Canadian Scots.”
Och, aye, eh?
Peter of Sydney (22:07:55) :
Well, they’ve lost the raw data. Not like it is a set of car keys, but they managed.
Ok i tried standard quote marks, then i tried quote marks suggested by another reader and i still cant make quotes, can someone clarify what tags i need to add to make them?
REPLY:
Use the word blockquote and /blockquote inside of left and right arrows, which I can’t display here, but are the ones above the comma and period on your keyboard – Anthony
<i> gives Italics </i> and you can do the same with <b> for bold </b> or <blockquote> for inset block quotes as noted by Anthony. Use the <strike> tag for
strikeoutfont. -emsMerry Christmas M&M! I sense a busy holiday season for you two 🙂
Well??
Im thinking about Proffessor Wibjörn Karlen here in Sweden.Doesnt this give him the opportunity to check his national and nordic original “raw data” with the “massaged” CRU s ? And isnt ALL historical rawdata still availeble in most cuntries? If this is the case,… shit can really hit the fan.Am i wrong??The real audit is now possible?
I agree with the previous posts. Unless the FULL RAW data gets published this if only to give the appearance of cooperation. I am not a conspiracy theorist but I still am very suspicious of these people. What I know of them from their emails makes me think, How long does it take to look through the data, throw together a nice mixture of numbers that reflect a warming trend and enough outliers to appear genuine, and then some code that does not do much but reflect what you want it to. I would not be suprised to hear that the code is not the original and the data is manipulated to reflect what they want. Now they are going to go out and say how the data was released in full along with the code and we are still not happy. This is a smart bunch. They have everything to lose at this point.
Someone smarter than me please catch them in this new lie! It is a battle of David and goliath for modern times. I live for the day when those with vested interests will be exposed. I watch NBC with their GE commercials about “Renewing America”.
Follow the money. It is all Psychology. If someone did not benefit in some way, they would not do it. Green used to be as uncool as Captain Planet. Only when it became profitable did everyone start to care so
much.
My final point is a quote from my father after I go over all of the peer-reviewed skeptical arguments, the emails, the UHI effect, and all the other things I have learned since actually questioning what I was hearing.
“I see what your saying, but I still believe in global warming.”
How do you argue with that?
I’d like to see the QA procedures they use for control and use of the data and code. Ten to one there is no QA trail for the code released and that used prior to release. We need to see every version of the code since it was first used years ago, the reasons for all the changes and the effects of the changes.
Steve, Anthony:
Congratulations to you two for your tenacity, and to all you others who’ve hung in there. And, good luck to all those who dig in to this material to see what’s left.
Here’s hoping that “raw” means “raw”. And that it’s complete.
For those who missed the conversation on a previous thread.
Oh how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Agenda 21 For Dummies
Anthony,
I lost the slash in front of my closing blockquote above, where I said my head was still spinning. The comment still reads okay, but you do have to flip your laptop upside-down to get a feel for the intended indentation. I’m confident that WUWT readers won’t have a problem with it since they’ve already learned to look at Mann’s sediment samples upside-down.
Ah I see Darwin Airport is there… I sense a follow up article in the Darwin series…
@Olle (22:40:02) :
Yes and no.
No because what the Met office released is a subset not the full set of data and yes he can check to see what is in the subset against the raw back in his home country. However he still will have no idea why any adjustements were made, just that they were.
My first reaction to this was “this is great”. After thinking about it though I have to be suspicious of any data that was being held from the public like this. It’s temperature records for goodness sakes, what is so secretive about that? Unless the providers of this data are worried about the quality of their sensor sites and they have fudged the data. Mr. Watts has shown what kind of quality we can expect from US stations, who’s to say that other countries don’t have the same problem.
Hopefully all of you who are much more learned than I am can sort through this mess and show everyone what is really happening.
I would not trust the data they released since these individuals could not be trusted. How can we make sure the raw data have not been modified to fit their agenda? Maybe the only way would be to get the original sheets of paper from individual stations and compare them with what CRU and MET gave up.
The more rocks you turn over, the more secretes you find that they have been hiding from you. Don’t look so surprised. They’ve been at it for decades. Who are they? Your owners. They see you as useless eaters and the unwashed masses. You are nothing to them. What I just said doesn’t sound so crazy anymore does it, not after what you have seen and read on WUWT.
Off-topic:
It looks like Build-a-Bear has pulled the global warming animated propaganda kiddie videos from their website (though still available on YouTube http://biggovernment.com/author/mflynn/). Here’s the email I just got from the Build-a-Bear CEO.
“Thank you for your email and candid comments regarding our animated holiday webisodes. We are sorry we disappointed you.
Our goal is to entertain and engage the imagination of children with our stuffed animals, our store environment, and online. Our intention with the “Under the North Star ” webisodes was to tell a story through the voices of our animal characters of how kids can make a difference in their own individual ways. We did not intend to politicize the topic of global climate change or offend anyone in any way. The webisodes concluded this week with Santa successfully leaving on his journey to deliver gifts around the world. The webisodes are no longer available on the site.
I started Build-A-Bear Workshop as a place for families and children to come for a …
Sincerely,
Maxine Clark
Maxine Clark
Founder and Chief Executive Bear
Build-A-Bear Workshop®
1954 Innerbelt Business Center Drive
St. Louis, MO 63114-5760
maxine@buildabear.com