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The Climatic Research Unit email controversy (dubbed "Climategate" in the media) began in November 2009 with the Internet leak of thousands of emails and other documents hacked from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The emails prompted widespread publicity and allegations by climate change skeptics that they showed evidence that climate scientists manipulated data, withheld scientific information, and tried to prevent dissenting scientific papers from being published.

Three independent reviews of the incident and materials were initiated in the UK. An independent review of the e-mail exchanges and the CRU's policies and working practices is being carried out by Sir Muir Russell at the request of the University of East Anglia. The UEA also commissioned a separate independent review of the CRU's published scientific research. A third review was conducted by the House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee.

According to the university, the emails and documents were obtained through the hacking of a server. The Norfolk Constabulary are conducting a criminal investigation of the server breach.

Timeline of the initial incident

The incident began when someone accessed a server used by the Climatic Research Unit and copied 160 MB of data containing more than 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 other documents. The University of East Anglia stated that the server from which the data were taken was not one that could easily have been accessed and the data could not have been released inadvertently.

The breach was first discovered on 17 November 2009 after the server of the RealClimate website was hacked and a copy of the stolen data was uploaded. According to Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate, "At around 6.20am (EST) Nov 17th, somebody hacked into the RC server from an IP address associated with a computer somewhere in Turkey, disabled access from the legitimate users, and uploaded a file FOIA.zip to our server." A link to the file on the RealClimate server was posted from a Russian IP address to the Climate Audit blog at 7.24 am (EST i.e. at 2009-11-17 12:24Z) with the comment "A miracle just happened." Schmidt discovered the RealClimate hack minutes after it occurred. He temporarily shut down the website and deleted the uploaded file. RealClimate reported that they had notified the University of East Anglia of the incident.

On 19 November an archive file containing the data was uploaded to a server in Tomsk, Russia, before being copied to numerous locations across the Internet. An anonymous post from a Saudi Arabian IP address to the climate-sceptic blog The Air Vent, described the material as "a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents" and stated that climate science is "too important to be kept under wraps".

The Norfolk police subsequently confirmed that they were "investigating criminal offences in relation to a data breach at the University of East Anglia" with the assistance of the Metropolitan Police's Central e-Crime unit, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and the National Domestic Extremism Team (NDET). Commenting on the involvement of the NDET, a spokesman said: "At present we have two police officers assisting Norfolk with their investigation, and we have also provided computer forensic expertise. While this is not strictly a domestic extremism matter, as a national police unit we had the expertise and resource to assist with this investigation, as well as good background knowledge of climate change issues in relation to criminal investigations." However, the police cautioned that "major investigations of this nature are of necessity very detailed and as a consequence can take time to reach a conclusion."

Content of the documents

The material comprised more than 1,000 e-mails, 2,000 documents, as well as commented source code, pertaining to climate change research covering a period from 1996 until 2009. According to an analysis by The Guardian, the vast majority of the e-mails related to four climatologists: Phil Jones, the head of the CRU; Michael E. Mann of Pennsylvania State University (PSU), one of the originators of the graph of temperature trends dubbed the "hockey stick graph"; Tim Osborn, a climate modeller; and Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The four were either recipients of senders of all but 66 of the 1,073 e-mails, with most of the remainder of the e-mails being sent from mailing lists. A few other e-mails were sent by, or to, other staff at the CRU. Jones, Briffa, Osborn and Hulme had written high-profile scientific papers on climate change that had been cited in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; they had aroused the ire of climate change sceptics for declining to release data or computer code, citing commercial agreements with suppliers.

Most of the e-mails concerned technical and mundane aspects of climate research, such as data analysis and details of scientific conferences. The Guardian's analysis of the e-mails found that the hacker had filtered them to remove routine administrative messages, focusing on e-mails containing the words "data", "climate", "paper", "research", "temperature" and "model". The controversy has thus focused on a small number of e-mails.

Climate change scientists and journalists highlighted the content of the messages, noting the e-mails showed evidence that climate scientists manipulated data, withheld scientific information, and tried to prevent dissenting scientific papers from being published. A few other commentators such as Roger A. Pielke said that the evidence supported claims that dissenting scientific papers had been suppressed. Academics and climate change researchers said that nothing in the emails proved wrongdoing, and dismissed the allegations. Independent reports by FactCheck and AP said that the e-mails did not affect evidence that man made global warming is a real threat, and said that e-mails were being misrepresented to support unfounded claims of scientific misconduct. They also concluded that there were disturbing suggestions that scientists had avoided sharing scientific data with sceptical critics.

Many commentators quoted one e-mail referring to a "trick" used in Mann's graph to deal with the well-known tree ring divergence problem to "hide the decline" that particular proxy showed for modern temperatures after 1950, when measured temperatures were rising. These two phrases were taken out of context by climate change sceptics including senator Jim Inhofe and Sarah Palin as though they referred to a decline in measured global temperatures, even though they were written when temperatures were at a record high. In their inquiry into allegations of research misconduct, Penn State reviewers found "he so-called ‘trick’ was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field." The Parliament of the United Kingdom select committee inquiry concluded that " appears to be a colloquialism for a "neat" method of handling data," and " was a shorthand for the practice of discarding data known to be erroneous".

Computer source code and a readme file included in the documents were the subject of discussion in the media. Commentators pointed to documents that suggested that "the coder, supremely frustrated with the poor quality of his data, simply creates some." John Graham-Cumming, a computer scientist interviewed by the BBC, said that the coding divulged was "below the standard you'd expect in any commercial software."

Responses

In the United Kingdom and United States, there were calls for official inquiries into issues raised by the documents. The British Conservative politician Lord Lawson said, "The integrity of the scientific evidence ... has been called into question. And the reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished. A high-level independent inquiry must be set up without delay." Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics said that there had to be a rigorous investigation into the substance of the email messages once appropriate action has been taken over the hacking, to clear the impression of impropriety given by the selective disclosure and dissemination of the messages. United States Senator Jim Inhofe, who had previously suggested that global warming was "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," also planned to demand an inquiry.

University of East Anglia

The University of East Anglia was notified of the possible security breach on 17 November, but when the story was published in the press on 20 November they had no statement ready. On 24 November, Trevor Davies, the University of East Anglia pro-vice-chancellor with responsibility for research, rejected calls for Jones' resignation or firing: "We see no reason for Professor Jones to resign and, indeed, we would not accept his resignation. He is a valued and important scientist." The university announced it would conduct an independent review to "address the issue of data security, an assessment of how we responded to a deluge of Freedom of Information requests, and any other relevant issues which the independent reviewer advises should be addressed."

The university announced on 1 December that Phil Jones was to stand aside as director of the Unit until the completion of an independent review. Two days later, the university announced that Sir Muir Russell would chair the review, and would "examine e-mail exchanges to determine whether there is evidence of suppression or manipulation of data". The review would also scrutinise the CRU's policies and practices for "acquiring, assembling, subjecting to peer review, and disseminating data and research findings" and "their compliance or otherwise with best scientific practice". In addition, the investigation would review CRU's compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests and also 'make recommendations about the management, governance and security structures for CRU and the security, integrity and release of the data it holds."

On 22 March 2010 the university announced the composition of an independent panel to reassess the science covered in key CRU papers which have already been peer reviewed and published in journals. The panel will be chaired by Lord Oxburgh, and members are to be members of the panel are: Professor Huw Davies of ETH Zurich, Professor Kerry Emanual at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Lisa Graumlich of the University of Arizona, Professor David Hand of Imperial College London, and Professors Herbert Huppert and Michael Kelly of the University of Cambridge. It is due to start its work in April 2010.

UK Met Office

On November 23, a spokesman for the Met Office, a UK agency which works with the CRU in providing global-temperature information, said there was no need for an inquiry. "The bottom line is that temperatures continue to rise and humans are responsible for it. We have every confidence in the science and the various datasets we use. The peer-review process is as robust as it could possibly be."

On December 5, however, concerned that public confidence in the science had been damaged by the e-mails, the Met Office indicated their intention to re-examine 160 years of temperature data, as well as to release temperature records for over 1000 worldwide weather stations online. The Met Office remained confident that its analysis will be shown to be correct and that the data would show a temperature rise over the past 150 years.

UK Government

Parliament

On 22 January 2010, the Science and Technology Select Committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom announced it would conduct an inquiry into the incident, examining the implications of the disclosure for the integrity of scientific research, reviewing the scope of the independent Muir Russell review announced by the UEA, and reviewing the independence of international climate data sets. The committee invited written submissions from interested parties, and published 55 submissions received by February 10, including submissions from the University of East Anglia, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Met Office, several other bodies, prominent scientists, some global warming 'sceptics', some MEPs and other interested parties. The Committee held an oral evidence session on March 1.

The Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry report said that, as far as it could tell, "the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact". The e-mails and claims raised in the controversy showed nothing to challenge the scientific consensus that "global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity". The MPs had seen no evidence to support claims that Jones had tampered with data or interfered with the peer-review process. The committee criticised a "culture of non-disclosure at CRU" and a general lack of transparency in climate science where scientific papers had commonly not included all the data and code used in reconstructions, but said that "Even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified." They added that "scientists could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by aggressively publishing all their data instead of worrying about how to stonewall their critics." The committee criticised the university for the way that freedom of information requests were handled, and for failing to give adequate support to the scientists to deal with such requests. The committee was careful to point out that their report was written after a single day of oral testimony and would not be as in-depth as other inquiries. The committee chairman Phil Willis said that the "standard practice" in climate science generally of not routinely releasing all raw data and computer codes "needs to change and it needs to change quickly", but also said that "There is no reason why Professor Jones should not resume his post. He was certainly not co-operative with those seeking to get data, but that was true of all the climate scientists".

When the report came out, Professor Myles Allen, a climate scientist at Oxford University, commented that while it was fundamental to good science to be open about exchanging data, withholding it from non-scientists has been common in the field of climate science. "There was an assumption within the climate science community that we could use our professional judgment to distinguish between professional scientists and activists or members of the public," he said. "The big implication in all this for science is that the is taking away our liberty to use our own judgment to decide who we spend time responding to. And that has a cost."

Information Commissioner's Office

With reference to freedom of information requests made by an individual, the Deputy Information Commissioner with responsibility for the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), Graham Smith, issued a statement which appeared in newspaper reports dated 27 January 2010; "The emails which are now public reveal that Mr. Holland's requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information." The deputy commissioner stated that the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) could not currently prosecute due to statute of limitations restrictions, but was looking into other time-barred investigations to see if a case could be made to change the relevant law. The university said it had not been made aware of the statement by Smith.

In its submission to the Science and Technology Select Committee, the university denied allegations that it had refused to release raw data in breach of the FOIA, and said that the statement, which the ICO had released to a journalist on 22 January 2010, had been incorrectly reported as referring to such data. The university stated that a letter that the ICO had sent it on 29 January 2010 showed that no breach of the law had been established, and that the ICO statement to the press only referred to prima facie evidence about at FOI request for private e-mails. The university made available the ICO letter, which said that "the prima facie evidence from the published e-mails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information. It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence." Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, told The Times that it would be unwise for the university to attempt to portray the ICO's letter in a positive light, as the correspondence would be examined by the Committee. The UEA told the newspaper that the point being made in their submission was that "there has been no investigation so no decision, as was widely reported. The ICO read e-mails and came to assumptions but has not investigated or demonstrated any evidence that what may have been said in emails was actually carried out."

In its inquiry report, the select committee blamed the university for mishandling Freedom of Information requests, and said it had “found ways to support the culture at CRU of resisting disclosure of information to climate change sceptics”. The committee also criticised the ICO, and said that it made "a statement to the press that went beyond that which it could substantiate", but accepted that the six month statute of limitations restriction was insufficient and should be reviewed. It called for a full investigation by the Muir Russell inquiry or by the Information Commissioner to resolve the question of whether there had been a breach of Section 77 of the FOIA.

Other responses

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told the BBC in December 2009 that he considered the affair to be "a serious issue and we will look into it in detail." He later clarified that the IPCC would review the incident to identify lessons to be learned, and he rejected suggestions that the IPCC itself should carry out an investigation. The only investigations being carried out were those of the University of East Anglia and the British police.

Pennsylvania State University announced in December 2009 it would review the work of Michael Mann, in particular looking at anything that had not already been addressed in an earlier National Academy of Sciences review which had found some faults with his methodology but agreed with the results. In response, Mann said he would welcome the review. As a result of the inquiry, the investigatory committee determined there was no credible evidence Mann suppressed or falsified data, destroyed email, information and/or data related to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, or misused privileged or confidential information. The committee did not issue a definitive finding on the final point of inquiry—whether Mann had operated within acceptable practices "for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities". This fourth complaint will be investigated by five prominent Penn State scientists from other scientific disciplines. Their report is due on June 3.

Mann said he regretted not objecting to a suggestion from Jones in a May 29, 2008 message that he destroy e-mails. "I wish in retrospect I had told him, 'Hey, you shouldn't even be thinking about this,'" Mann said in an interview published March 28, 2010. "I didn't think it was an appropriate request." Mann's response to Jones at the time was that he would pass on the request to another scientist. "The important thing is, I didn't delete any e-mails. And I don't think did either."

In a series of e-mails sent through an National Academy of Sciences (NAS) listserv, apparently forwarded outside the group by an unknown person, scientists discussing the "Climategate" fallout considered launching advertising campaigns, widening their public presence, pushing the NAS to take a more active role in explaining climate science and creating a nonprofit to serve as a voice for the scientific community.

Jon Krosnick, professor of communication, political science and psychology at Stanford University, said scientists were overreacting. Referring to his own poll results of the American public, he said "It's another funny instance of scientists ignoring science." Krosnick found that "Very few professions enjoy the level of confidence from the public that scientists do, and those numbers haven't changed much in a decade. We don't see a lot of evidence that the general public in the United States is picking up on the (University of East Anglia) e-mails. It's too inside baseball."

See also

• Global warming controversy
• Global warming conspiracy theory

References

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External links

• The Independent Climate Change Email Review, an independent review funded by the UEA, chaired by Sir Muir Russell
• Climate wars: The story of the hacked emails, the full manuscript of an investigation by The Guardian into the emails.
• Help write the full story on the hacked emails controversy Guardian declaration to help write story seeking a peer review.
• Videos:
  • "The Great Climategate Debate". A video of a lecture held at the MIT School of Science on December 10, 2009. The moderator was Henry D. Jacoby (MIT). Speakers were Kerry Emanuel (MIT), Judith Layzer (MIT), Stephen Ansolabehere (MIT and Harvard), Ronald G. Prinn (MIT), and Richard Lindzen (MIT).
  • "The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia". Video of House of Commons Select Committee oral evidence session, held on Monday 1 March 2010 at 3 pm. Witnesses are: (1) Rt Hon Lord Lawson of Blaby, Chairman, and Dr Benny Peiser, Director, Global Warming Policy Foundation; (2) Richard Thomas CBE; (3) Professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor, University of East Anglia, and Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit; (4) Sir Muir Russell KCB, Head of the Independent Climate Change E-Mails Review; (5) Professor John Beddington, Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Julia Slingo OBE, Chief Scientist, Met Office, and Professor Bob Watson, Chief Scientist, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

• Climate change assessment and attribution
• Environmental controversies
• Global warming
• Environmental skepticism
• Ethics of science and technology
• Hacking (computer security)
• 2009 in science
• 2009 in England