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)?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
George i take a different view. That statement issued last summer would make a better comedy sketch than Steve Coogan
matsibengtsson (23:57:59) : This is not the raw data. This is a bone thrown to the dog to make him quiet.
Right!
“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.”
Remember the email?
“The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? – our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it – thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who’ll say we must adhere to it !”
Sort of adds up doesnt it?
On another subject, what is also interesting is that they openly admit they don’t understand the two dominant climatic forces and the effect they have on climate, despite there being a large amount of research on them: oceans and clouds/water vapour, which comprise 98% of the climate, (Oceans have over 1000 times more ability to retain shortwave heat than air does longwave, and a much greater heat capacity, and 70% of the earth surface is ocean) and then go onto make pronouncements about what it will be like in years to come.
On the first day of Christmas
HADCRut sent to me
A portion of raw data
An a partidge in a Yamal tree
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” (Vergil) – I fear the Greeks even if they bring gifts.
I think we should certainly look this gift horse in the mouth (and elsewhere).
The statement from the met FAQ:
“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”
What a lot of tosh!! They have just accepted what Phil Jones has fed them. This data is the very basis for all their findings yet they discard it because it was expensive to retain.
They want to change the global economic basis on the strength of their “scientific” findings yet they cannot produce the data on which those findings are based.
If a PHD student proferred up that excuse to get his thesis accepted he would be laughed out of the faculty yet these guys expect billions of people to change the way they live their lives on this flimsy evidence.
They should be told to go back and reconstruct the data at their own expense. Their baseless “evidence” has been provided at taxpayers expense to date and it is not worth two bob.
The Met Office has been complicit blithely accepting the CRU assertions of confidentiality agreements existing to prevent disclosure. When the CRU could not produce such agreements – probably discarded with the original station data, they just complied. The emails regarding FOI indicate that various agencies were prepared to accept the CRU position in the absence of any lawful reason. If the CRU cannot produce such agreements then the data should have been released.
The credibility of the CRU is being further eroded with these latest releases. As the data is further picked apart, the reputations of politicians who have stood by these charlatans will also be destroyed.
The way some politicians have hitched their wagons to this train to expand their power, they will fully deserve all the approbrium that will come their way.
If anyone wants a layman’s explanation for this, it’s like asking for the ingredients and recipe that are used to make a blended soup and getting the actual soup instead, then asking again and getting the uncooked soup. You still don’t know what’s actually in it, in what ratios, and how it was prepared and it’s impossible to unblend the soup to find out.
What’s this? A smokescreen laid down by the Met Office to distract skeptics from derailing the real villain of the piece – the carbon trading money train?
DavePrime (01:08:12) :
“Now the domers can say,…”
Are you talking about Schmidt and Mann by any chance?…
“blah, blah, blah…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…blah, blah, blah”
Sir Humphrey would be so proud.
“And how are things going at the Freedom of Information Society”
“I can’t talk about that.”
I have taken a quick look at the 8 Swedish stations in the lot. Six of these are incidentally in the GHCN database, two are not. Results are as might be expected.
One has extreme UHI problems (Stockholms observatorium, right in the center of the city)
Four are airports (Östersund-Frösön, Karlstad, Jönköping, Visby)
One is in a small town (Haparanda)
Two (both in northern Sweden) are rural: Karesuando, Kvikkjokk
Figuring that by elimination I might be able to narrow down which countries’ data the Met Office might be reticent about releasing, I compiled a list of all countries named in the data “subset” files. There was not single country that I could find for which data had been withheld (and the subsets all generally include data leading up to 2009).
Furthermore, if you look at the station map for the subset data that the MET posted, you can see clearly that data has been released from virtually all countries (can anybody see one not covered?):
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/locations.GIF
If the Met is really hesitant about releasing data on the premise that they are somehow protected by a “strict (albeit undocumented, unremembered) understanding”, it would have to be a rather specific list, which would suggest that they know exactly which country objects, and which do not. And if only a portion of a particular countries’ data are being withheld, why was other data from that same country released? How could the Met distinguish between these data without having some record? And if there’s a record, and they do have names of countries with whom their are “strict understandings”, what would preclude them from naming those countries?
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.
If thats an official explanation its beyond laughable. Are we supposed to believe that documents/information were handed over – to a university mind you, not Freds Footwear Store – and that the contracts/legal agreements realting to them have been lost? Or that records were not kept? Well how is any agreement binding if there’s no contract, setting out the terms of the agreement. If this is actually the Met Office’s position they’re making fools of themselves. Far more likely, Jones just thought this one up off the cuff to protect his data: there never were any such agreements. And what are the implications of that?
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
How the hell do you do “Quality control” without knowing what the product should look like. What [snip] are they controlling the quality against when they don’t know what adjustments have been made. These people are clowns.
Shut the lot down. They provide nothing of value to the people of the UK or anywhere else. They are there solely to give Brown somewhere to LEAD everyone.
So, the CRU is still not practicing the scientific method, it has been almost two decades since they published the data, models and procedures needed for a skeptical analysis of any of their work (part of the scientific method). If they are not using the scientific method then they simply are not doing science. If it is not science then why have these ‘peer reviewed’ papers not yet been purged from the scientific record, and why do we continue to discuss the output of this non-science as if it were anything other than fiction?
Ponds and Fleishman may have been wrong, but they were at least real scientists. They did their experiments, published the results and their data, procedures and description of the apparatus and the methods. They where shown to be in error, fine, but they were still scientific in their work. The CRU on the other hand is junk, so I ask again, why are people not going after the papers and getting them ALL withdrawn?
If the papers were withdrawn then it would serve notice on the community that science is science and all else is fiction. If you publish fiction, it will be scrapped.
“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.”
This is hilarious. If they don’t know which countries they signed an agreement with, how do they know what data to withhold?
Is it in a file marked ‘SUPER SEKRIT’ with secret station codes that no one can decipher because they threw the secret decoder away? Or perhaps the data is from secret countries, such as Hockeystickastan, ready to be included when needed for super secret calculations…
I await the review of this information ealry in the New Year. Interesting little video on Bishop Hill of Phil Mcateer in Copenhagan looking for Phil Jones, trust the greens to get agreessive & start to get violent!
In the meantime, from one who has just returned to the south-west from Gloucestershire where I attended a delightful wedding on Monday, where they were experiencing some non-global warming-like weather, where I needed two glasses of mulled wine just to thaw the toes through so that I could walk again, as did many of the guests, I wish everyone who has posted, blogged, in favour or against the issues discussed, a Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year! May 2010 be a wonderful time to Hide the Decline! We down here are also experience some rather non-global warming-like weather, it’s freezing cold, as is most of the country, as is most of Europe (except the Peoples Democratic Republic of the European Union of course, where all is sunny & rosey, & the beautiful people are happy dedicated workers, who worship the Beautiful Father (or Mother) whoever they might happen to be! Whoops, I’ve used up my carbon credits for the week, the Carbon Police will be at my door in less than 20 minutes I’ll have to………….aarghh………………………………………………?
AtB
Anthony: It does not matter what met office or cru release anymore.. Its over…..
You are all being far too polite and reserved here. The volcanic eruptions are occurring everywhere with the Climate Changers and their mad panic as they head for the exits as the tectonic fault lines are spreading at breathtaking speed. As Mann tries desperately to distance himself from Jones, et al at EAU and blame it on Palin in editorials, the UK Met has flip-flopped from trust us and the nice homely lady with the big computer in the background, to besides lots of ‘signed up’ scientists do, to in any case it will take us at least 3 years to sort this lot out, to here have what we’ve got and don’t blame us cos the EAU are responsible for that bloody land temp record- http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/subsets.html
Sweet Jesus, read between the lines as the headless chooks are trying to backpeddle all over the place with their Questions and Answers about the data and methodology and the massive contradictions with their past stance. Basically it’s throw the mob a bone and hope like hell they don’t get trampled to death in the frenzy. Copenhagen has been their erupting Pompeii and it’s every Climate Changer for himself now.
If this AGW agnostic is struggling to come to grips with the enormity of what’s unfolding, I can only imagine what the prior cheer squads in the Mainstream Media are making of it all right now. How can I put the distinct possibility to them now? Ummm,errr….Never in the annals of modern science have so many been duped so much by so few for so much political embarrassment…? Or nothing to see here with these trusted repositories of data like the UK Met, etc and move along folks…? Other ructions aside, the UK Met’s past and present stance now point unerringly to Climategate.
“We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.” – Phil Jones -(and now the Met Office)
It’s all too transparent. They’re buying themselves some intellectually dishonest “plausible deniability”, wherein they can say, “We released data to the public, what more do they want?” — as if a vast swath of the public is too stupid to smell a rat.
“It’s all been publicly available!” is PRECISELY what NASA, RealClimate and others are claiming now, even though James Hansen, Michael Mann, et al, TO THIS DAY have not released or made public all their materials, codes, programs, data and methodologies.
Wasn’t this data released over two weeks ago?
Not sure how this MO release is much different from previous releases.
The data downloadable from this page are a subset of the full HadCRUT3 record of global temperatures
and
To assist users in making these for themselves [gridded fields], we are providing two Perl programs:
Leaving the data subset and permission issues aside, I’m still not sure this is much to do with transparency. The code isn’t the CRU code.
If somebody finds a problem (not suggesting they will) the answer will be “ah that’s because you are not using the CRU code” or “you have obviously misinterpreted Jones et al.. 19xx”. In terms of replication or transparency I don’t see that this release moves anything forward from the FOI requests.
This is the equivalent of GISS releasing a couple of utilities that perform something similar to a step or two in the Gistemp process rather than their current offering.
I can see Gavin over a RC preparing his replies as we speak .. “see you give them the tools and the data and they are still not satisfied … always it’s more more more (and obviously best left with those who know what they are doing)”.
(knowing full well what has been released would never have allowed replication or investigation)
Anthony
Met Office: Release of code & data
To the credit of the Met Office as scientists, according to the
UK Times and Daily Telegraph on 5 December, they intended to go
further, and undertake over the next three years a full
re-analysis of the temperature data. But seemingly the British
Government intervened, and successfully exerted pressure upon
the Met Office to deny the project.
Here are the relevant parts of the Times, Daily Telegraph,
and BBC News stories!
Note (1) that the Met Office denial as reported in the
BBC News story seems deliberately worded so as to confuse the
three-year project in the audience’s mind with the impending
release by the Met Office of temperature data for a subset
of over 1500 land stations:
Note (2) that I am forced to rely upon a recital of the BBC News
story by the Weston-super-Mare website, WSM Weather because
some unhelpful person has removed the story from the BBC’s
archive, and made the link to the story that the WSM Weather
gave now point irrelevantly to the next story in the archive:
* Per the Times on 5 December:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article6945445.ece
‘The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature
data after admitting that public confidence in the science
on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked
emails.
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 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 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.’
* Per the Daily Telegraph on 5 December:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/6732011/Scientists-may-reexamine-temperature-data-to-prove-climate-change.html
‘To try to restore public confidence the Met Office is
talking to other meteorological organisations around the
world about recreating the model using the same raw data
but more modern computers.
The whole process will also use any new information and
be more open to the public.
However, it could take up to three years for the study to
complete, meaning the scientific world would have to wait
until after 2012 to provide updated proof of the extent of
global warming.’
* But per the BBC on 5 December:
http://www.wsmweather.co.uk/?p=3102
‘The Met Office (MO) is to announce it will publish the
raw data it uses to analyse man-made global warming.
It follows a row about the reliability of data from the
Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East
Anglia which has been dubbed “Climategate”.
An MO spokesman denied it would spend up to three years
re-examining the climate change data, and said it had
already planned to publish the material long before the
“Climategate” controversy broke.
…
The material, dating back 160 years from more than 1,000
weather stations around the world, is expected to be
released this week.
It comes as an independent review is announced into leaked
e-mails at the CRU in Norwich to see whether there is
evidence of manipulation or suppression of data “at odds
with acceptable scientific practice”.
…
An MO spokesman denied it would spend up to three years
re-examining the climate change data, and said it had
already planned to publish the material long before the
“Climategate” controversy broke.’
Stephen Prower
37 Buckthorn Avenue
Stevenage
Herts SG1 1TW
Wednesday 23 December 2009
Being interested in the North Atlantic temperature anomaly, I’ve chosen remote station in Lerwick (Shetland isles, half way Scotland to Norway, far away from major urban areas or large land mass), and calculated 10 year running mean as shown here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Lerwick-TA.gif
Given the source (when did the met office last tell the truth?) we can dependon the lies, except hat the FOI reason that talks, probably freudianly, about causing an international incident, to true it has, it has upset the plans of a lot of scam artists, Gore and obama among them. We should keep a list, then make sure they never get a position of responsibility again! These assholes can never be seen as fit to serve again.