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The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) is a component of the University of East Anglia and is one of the leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.

It has around thirty research scientists and students and has developed a number of the data sets widely used in climate research, including the global temperature record used to monitor the state of the climate system, as well as statistical software packages and climate models.

In August 2006, the Climatic Research Building was named the Hubert Lamb Building after its first Director.

The CRU collates data from many sources around the world. The CRU's director, Phil Jones, told the science journal Nature that he was working to make the data publicly available with the agreement of its owners but this was expected to take some months, and objections were anticipated from national meteorological services that made money from selling the data. It was not free to share that data without the permission of its owners because of confidentiality agreements, including with institutions in Spain, Germany, Bahrain and Norway, that restricted the data to academic use. In some cases the agreements were made verbally, and some of the written agreements had been lost during a move. Despite this, the Climate Research Unit has been the target of attention by climate change sceptics who have made numerous requests under the Freedom of Information Act for data used by the unit's scientists. Nature reported that in the course of five days in July 2009 the CRU had been "inundated" with 58 FOI requests from analyst Stephen McIntyre and people affilitiated with his blog Climate Audit.

E-mail controversy

In November 2009 hackers broke into a server used by the CRU and stole a large quantity of data, anonymously posting online more than 1,000 emails and more than 2,000 other documents found. Some climate change sceptics asserted that a number of the leaked e-mails were evidence that scientists had conspired to manipulate data to strengthen the evidence for anthropogenic climate change and to keep scientists who have contrary views out of peer-review literature. These accusations have been denied, and the CRU's researchers stated that the e-mails had been taken out of context and merely reflected an honest exchange of ideas. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, called the charges that the emails involve any "untoward" activity "ludicrous."

Climate change data discarded

The CRU has revealed that it discarded much of the raw temperature data on which its predictions of global warming are based, according to The Times. The original data, stored on paper and magnetic tape, were dumped "to save space" when the CRU moved to a new building in the 1980s. This means that "other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years," the Times reported. The CRU was forced to reveal the losses following requests for the data under the UK Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

References

1. Brown, Craig (8 February 2005). "The forecast for Scotland: wet, wet, wet". The Scotsman. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
2. "Global temperature 2008: Another top-ten year". Met Office. 2008-01-03. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
3. "About the Climatic Research Unit". Retrieved 2008-05-05.
4. "Climate data spat intensifies". Nature. No. 460. 12 August 2009. p. 787.
5. "Hackers target leading climate research unit". BBC News. 20 November 2009.
6. "Climate Strife Comes to Light". The Wall Street Journal. 23 November 2009.
7. Revkin, Andrew. (2009, Nov. 20). Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute. New York Times. Global Edition: Environment. Accessed 11-23-2009.
8. Eilperin, Juliet (21 November 2009). "Hackers steal electronic data from top climate research center". The Washington Post.
9. Webster, Ben (21 November 2009). "Sceptics publish climate e-mails 'stolen from East Anglia University'". The Times.
10. "East Anglia University Statement on Hacking of Climate Research Unit Emails". UEA CRU. 21 November 2009.
11. ^ "Climate change data dumped", by Jonathan Leake, Times Environment Editor, 11/29/2009

External links

• Climatic Research Unit

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