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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‘Phillip Bratby (22:41:33) :
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.’
Well said. I agree 100% with you.
To me, this reads like: ‘we’ve got to release something, so we’ll release something ‘new’, which makes us look as if we’re cooperating, but we’ll drag it out as long as we can’.
You’ll note the words ‘this reads like’. I’m not saying my intuition is correct, more what my sniff on the situation is……
Phillip Bratby is completely right in commenting on QA procedures.
If we are to believe any data or processed data full QA procedures need to be provided. Any REPUTABLE organisation will be able to provide this together with audit procedures and results. Software Verification and Validation should be to IEEE – STD-610. Professional code should be numbered and commented for testing . We must demand from the MET or CRU Quality assurance information on data as important as this. I doubt whether the schoolboy code I have seen will pass any professional scrutiny.
Anthony
Oops!
The extracts from the BBC story should read:
* 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”.
The MO has written to 188 countries for permission to publish
the historic data it says proves that the world is warming up
due to man-made emissions.
A spokesman denied reports ministers had tried to block the
publication.
…
The MO’s database is a main source of analysis for the UN’s
climate change science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), which joins talks next week at the
long-awaited Copenhagen summit.
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.
…
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/8396696.stm
Published: 2009/12/05 05:31:20 GMT’
Is this the data they lost? Now they found it? I would be very careful drawing conclusions from data supplied by known fraudsters.
The Met Office state in answer to the question “Why is there no comprehensive copy of the underlying data?”:
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
The is patently BS. Although hard disk space was a bit limited you could still get an awful of of bytes on station data on a 2400ft reel of magnetic tape at 56Kbpi.
Difficult for me, as I’ve been a Mac user (and fan) since 1987.
As for this data dump, I’d say file more FOIA demands for immediate access to whatever RAW data they have, wherever they have it. And the same for the other climate manipulators. Maybe a class-action lawsuit would help.
/Mr Lynn
But seemingly the British Government intervened, and successfully exerted pressure upon the Met Office to deny the project.
One just hopes for a Met whistleblower.
When as a scientist you lose my respect for the quality of your data, I will never again trust your data no matter what. CRU you have lost my respect, not that you had much anyway.
Boudu (01:43:45) :
On the first day of Christmas
HADCRut sent to me
A portion of raw data
An a partidge in a Yamal tree
And on the second day of Christmas
Hadley sent to me
Two hashed up PERL scripts
A portion of raw data
And a partridge in a Yamal tree
This is doing my head in. On the one hand the MO say:
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.’ (from Stephen Prower (03:57:42) )
but on the other they say:
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.
So they were planning to release supposedly confidential data long before their sudden discovery that it isn’t confidential after all – if only they could show such foresight with their weather forecasts.
Malaga View (23:53:02) :
Global Warming Goulash
There are several recipes.
GWG (FOI-A)
There is a photograph of the dish on our printed menu which is freely available at any of our restaurants. You can pry the recipe from our cold dead hands.
GWG (FOI-B)
Our GWG uses ingredients freely available at any good supermarket and might include potatoes.
GWG (FOI-C)
Look, here is a list of ingredients one could include and there is a supermarket over there so have at it.
GWG (climategate)
THE NORWICH RESTAURANT IS CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
It appears that somebody may have planted covert surveillance devices in our Norwich kitchen in a criminal attempt to faithfully replicate our delicious GWG along with many other customer favourites.
GWG (MO-A)
Although we have every confidence that the food served at our restaurant in Norwich has never contained Cockroaches or Rat poison, we feel it is our duty to investigate. This investigation may take some time and we hope the public will demonstrate patience.
We can confirm however that our delicious GWG contains, at the very least, the following ingredients .. Potatoes (maris piper), carrots (large firm) … seasoning.
GWG (MO-B)
Our parent company feels that any major investigation of our Norwich restaurant facility at this time may reflect badly on our other Restaurants. It was felt that even the suggestion of Cockroaches may have resulted in irreparable damage to our restaurants across the country, particularly as we move into this festive period.
We can confirm though that there are other ingredients in our delicious GWG such as … vegetable stock, onions (large mild), beef (stewing) …
InstructionsPortion ingredients utilising something like the tool presented here (see diagram).
ARE CURRENT WARMING AND SEA LEVEL RISE PROBLEMATIC
The paper entitled: ‘Past Temperatures Directly from the Greenland Ice Sheet’ at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/282/5387/268/
-offers a fascinating, and pretty ironclad record of temperatures extant when the upper layer of the Greenland ice sheet was laid down — see especially Figure 3 showing:
A. Last 100,000 years
B. Last 10,000 years
C. Last 2,000 years
It is obvious that — contrary to the assertions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — there have been several periods since the last glaciation ended and modern agriculture began, when the climate has been considerably warmer than it is now.
————————————————————-
Also in the light of the documented greater than 20 degree C temperature rise during the approximately 25,000 year period since the last DEGLACIATION began (Figure 3 A in the paper above), it is interesting to examine documentation of the sea level rise that accompanied that 25,000 year / greater than 20 degree warming history –– see graph entitled:
‘Post-Glacial Sea Level Rise’ at:
http://gregladen.com/wordpress/wp-content/graphics/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
— and then speculate on the sea level rise (resulting from both melting ice and sea water temperature-related volume expansion) that we might reasonably expect if the average documented natural climate warming (less than 1 degree C per century), that we have experienced since the end of the Little Ice Age, continues for the next 100 years // bearing in mind that there is MUCH LESS ICE AVAILABLE for melting than there was when the vast continental ice sheets were present as the last DEGLACIATIN got underway – and – that the Holocene period, starting about 8,000 years ago, featured temperatures at least 2 degrees warmer than those we are experiencing now.
Peter Salonius
Seems to only be a limited number of Australian stations and the fact they have Darwin Airport starting in 1882 is not a good start.
Wonder how Australia managed to keep powered flight secret from the rest of the world for 20 odd years.:-)
Australian records start at folder 94 for those interested
Cheers & Merry Christmas
I cannot imagine how we would expect actual temperatures to be reported from corrupt third world countries, now that all they have to do is imply “climate change” of any type to lobby for a big handout from the UN. Did anyone ever go to jail over the Oil for Food program?
AGW was bad enough, using the concept “Climate Change” creates a worldwide angry victim class where every weather event must be blameworthy.
Massive worldwide welfare fraud in the brew. That’s what makes me wonder sometimes if the scientists didn’t see this coming and out themselves. The unforeseen consequences could be just enormous.
So I would expect temperature readings to be pre-adjusted from many countries. How could you trust them if our “top” scientists, under a microscope, are skewing things?
Michael R (22:23:26) :
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/resources/#comment-65319 for more hints.
Jay (22:40:56) :
You can’t. Instead you pray for a snow storm, preferably one comparable one in the 1970s during the last cool phase of the PDO.
Or one that immobilizes Washington DC. Those are always good for the soul as long as you aren’t inconvenienced.
I hope Scaffeta will do the same.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18307-sceptical-climate-researcher-wont-divulge-key-program.html
Just make a comparison of some random stations. If anything suspicious shows up, then do the whole lot.
The code up at the MET Office does not appear to be the code used by CRU:
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11957
climategatestuff (03:41:27) :
Wasn’t this data released over two weeks ago?
Yes.
It’s a publicity stunt for RC and others to say, “See, we supplied everything. Those deniers are crazy!” Value added data and likely medled code. It’s worth something, but mostly PR.
We couldn’t trust them to release data.
We can’t trust what they released.
There was a motive to refuse to cooperate.
When Climate Progress in the last days suddenly flood the market with new studies and graphs, ask why they release graphs and not data.
BUT…wasn´t it the preferred massaging method “Cherry Picking”?, as shown previously, the warmer stations were graciously selected.
They have changed, adjusted, massaged, cherry picked data so many times that I would bet that not even them know which data is correct and which it is not.
Believe me, when you execute a binding confidentiality agreement with someone you keep a copy. Their statement that they don’t know who they had an agreement with is hogwash.
Beyond that, since they did not release the underlying raw data and limited the release to a subset (chosen how, exactly?) this looks like they are not acting in good faith. Might as well be negotiating disarmament with North Korea.