PRESS RELEASE
Stockholm March 5, 2010
Climate scientist delivers false statement in parliament enquiry
It has come to our attention, that last Monday (March 1), Dr. Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU), in a hearing with the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee made a statement in regards to the alleged non-availability for disclosure of Swedish climate data.
Dr. Jones asserted that the weather services of several countries, including Sweden, Canada and Poland, had refused to allow their data to be released, to explain his reluctance to comply with Freedom of Information requests.
This statement is false and misleading in regards to the Swedish data.
All Swedish climate data are available in the public domain. As is demonstrated in the attached correspondence between SMHI (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute), the UK Met Office and Dr. Jones (the last correspondence dated yesterday March 4), this has been clearly explained to Dr. Jones. What is also clear is that SMHI is reluctant to be connected to data that has undergone “processing” by the East Anglia research unit.
STOCKHOLM INITIATIVE
Göran Ahlgren, secretary general
Kungsgatan 82
12 27 Stockholm, Sweden
===================================
They included attached PDF files. which I have uploaded to WUWT below. Click for PDF files:
Request_from_Professor_Phil_Jones_regarding_the_release_of_data_from_the_HadCRUT_dataset__dnr_SMHI_
Data_from_the_HadCRUT_dataset_100304
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Re: my 13:31:57, meh, just saw the attachment of Jones’ letter explaining the differences in the versions, and it is because of the CRU tampering after all. Note to self: read the paperwork more carefully before commenting…
Stockholm Initiative are a bunch of skeptics. They are hardly unbiased observers, yet this piece makes it appear that they are an official body. Those of you who read the pdf, will realise that they largely support Prof. Jones story.
SMHI are probably not keen on there being two versions of their data in circulation. Regardless of the quality of each version, this guarantee confusion.
@Spence_UK (13:31:57) :
Not quite. Jones *doesn’t have the raw data*. He lost it, remember? Remember all the stories about data archiving standards and abilities in the 1980s so they purged the raw data and only kept their “value added” dataset?
That’s why we’re really talking about *two different datasets” here. This is clearly what the Swedes finally figured out and thus gave permission on Mar 4, with reasonable and appropriate provisos to make it clear that what Jones is going to release on his website *is a different dataset than what the Swedes have on their website*.
The above paragraph isn’t news to those who have been following the story closely, but clearly the Swedes hadn’t been so their original refusal no doubt seemed very appropriate to them. . . until they had the “ah ha” moment about the real state of play and came up with a quite reasonable solution to get that data (Jones ‘value add’ version, that is) out in public without them (the Swedes, that is) being thought the culprit for any nasties that are later found in it.
2 points:
1. The letter from SMHI is dated 21 Dec 2009 which is well after the FOI requests asking for the raw data used by CRU, Does this mean Jones had never asked for permission to release this data until the emails were released and he needed to find some way to back up his non-disclosure’ statements?
2. SMHI’s 21Dec 2009 letter refuses permission for Jones to place their data (or adjusted data claimed to be SMHI’s raw data) ON THE UEA WEBSITE. There is nothing in the letter stating that Jones cannot pass on the SMHI data to other researchers, FOI requesters, etc.
Göran Ahlgren is an active climate anti-alarmist, so that last statement above is just spinning the SMHI letters into overdrive. That Dec 21 letter reads like a refusal just like they said during the Mar 1 hearing. That second letter is dated Mar 4. In this case I think Jones is on solid ground.
Now that it is clear the the “adjusted” data can be released after all, it’d be mighty interesting to compare against the SMHI raw-raw data.
Doesn’t this turn of events also prove that no one can check/review his work with the data you get from the original source?
I believe this goes back to the emails. Jones and others were coming up with ways they can hide from FIA requests. That other countries/sources “refused” to allow them to release data was one of the ways they used, and said so in their emails to each other. But now it appears this was not a refusal, it was a qualified yes. That is a big OOPS.
See:
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/013481.html
Could you make this up?
What some people are overlooking is that Dr. Jones and the Met office were asking the SMHI for permission to release the CRU’s homogenized version of the data as being the SMHI version of the data ie he was going to try and pawn off value added data as the raw from Sweden.
Now just think of the postion that would have put the Swedes in if they had said yes to that, then when they got their website up and running people went and downloaded the real raw data from them. They would then get nailed for trying to pull Phil’s chestnuts out of the fire by agreeing to let Phil mis-characterize the CRU value added data as raw from them. Can you say accessory to a cover up?
I have been thru the links provided in the Swede’s Dec document and the actual data is in English and they do things a mite different. They provide 6 Temp readings: 0600, 1200 and 1800 UTC as well as Min/Max, they calculate their Mean by using all 5 readings. You can read that here:
http://data.smhi.se/met/climate/time_series/day/temperature/file_content_temperature.pdf
Here is the link straight to the data files:
http://data.smhi.se/met/climate/time_series/day/temperature/
Word of warning the files are txt files and they are the daily readings for each day per month per year.
More about the Scandinavian temperatures:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/scandinavian-temperatures-ipccacutes–scandinavia-gate–127.php?id=127
geo (13:25:01) :
When you have someone who plays with the words as an answer it makes for bad press all the way around. He used them in his wiggly defense.
The Swedes have a relationship to maintain with member nations of the EU, and backing up antics like that will generate a lot of animosity.
Hence, the 2nd letter, after they saw his performance and his intent was made clear.
Dropped him like a hot potato.
geo (13:08:47) :
What’s wrong with this picture? Good question.
Given the information that the version of the data from the SMHI stations that you hold are likely to differ from the data we hold, SMHI do not want the data to be released on your web site.
Ah oh, problem with the raw Swiss data too?
As far as I can see, all this is taking place subsequent to the FOI requests which were refused on the grounds of preexisting NDAs. The NDAs cited did not include Sweden:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/availability/agreements.pdf
Swedish sorry.
@Turning Tide (13:16:59) :
Except the data on the Swedish site isn’t what all the FOIA were about. Jones doesn’t have that data, and it isn’t what he requested to release on his own website.
Really, it is a tangled mess and I get that. And so, to, eventually did the Swedes.
There is the raw data that the Swedes and others have. Let’s call that “Swede I” (“Canada I”, “Poland I”, etc)
Then calculations and stuff were done to the oldest parts of it (say pre-1990 observations) and stored as the “value add” version that Jones keeps. We’ll call that “Swede II” (etc). Jones, having temporarily had custody of “Swede I”, then threw it in the trashcan sometime in the 1980s. There are stories about this out there on the internet.
Then further calculations are done to all the “II” versions to arrive at CRUTEM.
Jones wrote the Swedes and asked to release “Swede II”. The Swedes wrote back and said “Not necessary, Swede I is already on our website”. Somewhere in between there and Mar 4 they realized that the issue Jones was pointing at wasn’t “Swede I” availability, it was “Swede II” availability. So they came up with a good solution to allow Swede II to be available while disclaiming responsibility for it and providing an easy route to get Swede I too from their website.
For a guy like Steve McIntyre to check Jones work, he needs *both* Swede I and Swede II, and the algorithms that are applied to all the “II” versions to arrive at CRUTEM.
There, I think that’s the best I can do to explain my understanding of what happened here. If the internet train is gonna run me over anyway after that on its way to more Jones bashing (which he has often richly deserved, just not this time so far as I can see), I would appreciate it if someone would explain where I’m wrong while I’m getting flattened. 🙂
Bit of a red herring. Stockholm Initiative have sexed this one up. Calm down everyone. You’re sounding like warmist alarmists, grabbing at anything. From the attachments this really isn’t a big deal.
It’s also worthwhile to note the the group of Swedes bashing Jones on Mar 5 aren’t the same group of Swedes who gave him permission on Mar 4 to release “Swede II”.
“Stockholm Initiative” is just confused (easy enough!) about the difference between Swede I and Swede II, and why it matters re the foia requests.
Perhaps they could have avoided confusion if Jones weren’t a little embarrassed by his inability to identify the original “raw” data in his “value-added” version.
In essence, he asked the Swedes if he could release his own data set, not theirs.
He apparently felt he ought to ask permission to release his own data set, because he couldn’t distinguish between the parts which were his own and the parts which remained the same as the original Swedish data.
The reply from the Swedes shows they recognized that whatever Jones released would differ in some parts from their own original data.
Rather than do as they eventually did in March, the Swedes at first said they would rather Jones not release the hybridized data set that he had developed.
Subsequently, after Jones claimed that public release of Swedish data had been refused, the Swedes tried to clarify–their data is publicly available, but Jones’s data set is not theirs since he has changed it.
Since Swedish data is available, and since Jones holds his own adjusted version of that available data, I wonder why Jones didn’t simply ask the Swedes for their original data so he could see what his adjustments had done to it.
The question all along has been whether the original data could be validly used to produce Jones’s end product. So, why didn’t Jones simply ask the Swedes for the original data which he had long ago thrown away?
The Stockholm Initiative’s Webpages are completely blank right now, but versions with text are still in Google cache and Yahoo! cache. Internet Archive found no matches.
I had a look on SMHI,
after I recognized that the old urls to datas don’t work anymore.
They had a relaunch of their website.
Haven’t found them yet.
An english starting point for searching may be here:
http://www.smhi.se/en/services/professional-services/data-and-statistics
For those of you who haven’t followed the CRU FOIA story closely, here’s the key webpage, which was the response by CRU back in August 2009 to requests for raw station data the forms the basis for the HADCRUT3 global temperature anomaly time series.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/availability/
The key sentence is “Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data. ”
In other words, the CRU say that they no longer hold the raw, orginal data. The CRU only has data that has been adjusted, homogenized, and most likely, pasteurized and warmed.
@JeffC
I understand that and reading Jones request letter I can understand the Swedish reluctance to have their name associated with it.
I was suggesting that if I received a letter as received by Dr Jones I would also have taken that to be a refusal to release the data.
Notwithstanding that I really wished they would have let him as it would have given a wonderful opportunity to compare the raw data (assuming the Swedish version isn’t also “adjusted”) with the CRU adjusted version.
Some where I recall seeing a statement or press release by the CRU or U of East Anglia, back in August 2009, that said they were sending out requests to the original providers of data.
It appears from the files provided by the Swedes, that this request only went out around November 30th.
So it looks like it took the unauthorized release of the climategate e-mails to spur UEA into doing what they said they were doing last August.
Do I have the dates right?
Is this another mini-scandal ?
We need Jim Henson to come back from the dead to do a skit with the Swedish Chef cooking the global warming data. Bork, bork, bork.