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Climatic Research Unit email controversy

The Hubert Lamb Building, which houses the Climatic Research Unit
Date	17 November 2009
Location	Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia
Also known as	"Climategate"
Inquiries	House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, reported 31 March 2010.

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 from the University of East Anglia's (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU). According to the university, the emails and documents were obtained through the hacking of a server. Climate change sceptics's allegations that they revealed misconduct within the climate science community were quickly publicised by the media, provoking the controversy. The UEA and CRU issued rebuttals of the allegations. Additionally, the Norfolk Constabulary is conducting a criminal investigation of the server breach.

Three independent reviews into the affair were initiated in the UK, two of which were concluded by the end of March 2010. The CRU's director, Professor Phil Jones, stood aside temporarily from his post during the reviews. Reports by the House of Commons' Science and Technology Select Committee and an independent Science Assessment Panel commissioned by the UEA concluded that there was no evidence of malpractice on the part of the CRU and Phil Jones, though they did find that there was room for improvement in some of the CRU's working practices. The scientific consensus that "global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity" was determined not to be challenged by the emails and there was "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit." The UEA was criticised for a "culture of withholding information" and although the CRU's use of statistics was generally commended, some of their methods may not have been the best for the purpose. The reports concluded that Phil Jones had no case to answer and that better statistical methods might not have produced significantly different results. The CRU's detractors were also criticised, with one of the reports deploring the tone of their criticism and finding that some of the criticism had been "selective and uncharitable". The findings of the third review have yet to be published.

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 emails 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". That same day, Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit was forwarded an internal email sent to UEA staff warning that "climate change sceptics" had obtained a "large volume of files and emails". The climate-sceptic blog Watts Up With That, which had obtained a copy of the files, also received a posting from the hacker complaining that nothing was happening. Its moderator Steve Mosher replied: "A lot is happening behind the scenes. It is not being ignored. Much is being coordinated among major players and the media. Thank you very much. You will notice the beginnings of activity on other sites now. Here soon to follow." Shortly afterwards, the emails began to be widely publicised on climate-sceptic blogs and subsequently in the media.

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." The investigation is as yet unresolved.

Climate scientists at the CRU and elsewhere received numerous threatening and abusive e-mails in the wake of the initial incidents. Norfolk Police interviewed Phil Jones about death threats made against him following the release of the emails, and death threats against two scientists also are under investigation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. Climate scientists in Australia have reported receiving threatening e-mails including references to where they live and warnings to "be careful" about how some people might react to their scientific findings.

Content of the documents

The material comprised more than 1,000 emails, 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 emails 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 or senders of all but 66 of the 1,073 emails, with most of the remainder of the emails being sent from mailing lists. A few other emails 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.

Most of the emails concerned technical and mundane aspects of climate research, such as data analysis and details of scientific conferences. The Guardian's analysis of the emails found that the hacker had filtered them using keywords, including "Yamal", "tree rings", and "Phil Jones", so that these terms appear in many of the documents. The controversy has thus focused on a small number of emails.

Climate change sceptics gained wide publicity in blogs and news media, making allegations that the hacked emails showed evidence that climate scientists manipulated data. A few other commentators such as Roger A. Pielke said that the evidence supported claims that dissenting scientific papers had been suppressed. The Wall Street Journal reported the emails revealed apparent efforts to ensure the IPCC include their own views and exclude others and to withhold scientific data. Reason reported that the CRU evidently plotted to remove journal editors with whom they disagreed and suppress the publication of articles that they disliked. The ICO made a statement that the emails revealed that freedom of information requests were 'not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation' but that they could not prosecute due to statute of limitations. Academics and climate change researchers said that nothing in the emails proved wrongdoing, and dismissed the allegations. Independent reviews by FactCheck and the Associated Press said that the emails did not affect evidence that man made global warming is a real threat, and said that emails 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 email 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 former Governor of Alaska 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. The readme file indicated to some 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." In an editorial, Myles Allen wrote that contrary to its treatment by some commentators the code was entirely pedagogical and was not used for any research or analysis associated with the scientific publications showing the existence of global warming.

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 claimed 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 security breach on 17 November 2009, 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 the review. Two days later, the university announced that Sir Muir Russell would chair the inquiry, which would be known as the Independent Climate Change Email Review, and would "examine email 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." It is due to report by the end of May 2010.

On 22 March 2010 the university announced the composition of an independent Science Assessment Panel to reassess key CRU papers which have already been peer reviewed and published in journals. The panel did not seek to evaluate the science itself, but rather whether "the conclusions represented an honest and scientifically justified interpretation of the data." The university consulted with the Royal Society in establishing the panel. It was chaired by Lord Oxburgh and its membership consisted of 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 started its work in March 2010 and released its report on 14 April 2010. During its inquiry, the panel examined eleven representative CRU publications selected by the Royal Society that spanned a period of over 20 years, as well as other CRU research materials. It also spent fifteen person days at the UEA carrying out interviews with scientists.

Parliament

On 22 January 2010, the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee announced it would conduct an inquiry into the affair, 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 that it had received by 10 February. They included 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 professional bodies, prominent scientists, some climate change sceptics, several MEPs and other interested parties. An oral evidence session was held on 1 March 2010. The committee released its report on 31 March 2010.

UK Government

UK Met Office

On 23 November 2009, a spokesman for the Met Office, a UK government 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 5 December 2009, however, the Met Office indicated its intention to re-examine 160 years of temperature data in the light of concerns that public confidence in the science had been damaged by the controversy over the emails. The Met Office would also publish online the temperature records for over 1,000 worldwide weather stations. It remained confident that its analysis would be shown to be correct and that the data would show a temperature rise over the past 150 years.

Information Commissioner's Office

The Deputy Information Commissioner, Graham Smith, told a journalist in January 2010 that "the emails which are now public reveal that ... 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 FOI Act, and said that the Deputy Information Commissioner's comments had been incorrectly reported as referring to such data. The university stated that a letter that the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) had sent it on 29 January 2010 showed that no breach of the law had been established, and that the ICO's comments to the press referred only to prima facie evidence about an FOI request for private emails. The university made available the ICO's letter, which said that "the prima facie evidence from the published emails 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 emails 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, which it said had 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 FOI Act.

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 review by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences which had found some faults with his methodology but agreed with the results. In response, Mann said he would welcome the review. The investigatory committee subsequently determined there was no credible evidence Mann suppressed or falsified data, destroyed emails, information and/or data related to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, or misused privileged or confidential information. The committee did not make 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 29 May 2008 message that he destroy emails. "I wish in retrospect I had told him, 'Hey, you shouldn't even be thinking about this,'" Mann said in March 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 emails. And I don't think did either."

In a series of emails 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) emails. It's too inside baseball."

Reports

House of Commons Science and Technology Committee

The Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry reported on 31 March 2010 that it had found that "the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact". The emails and claims raised in the controversy did not 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 usually not included all the data and code used in reconstructions. It 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." The report 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 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". Jones had admitted sending "awful emails"; Willis commented that " probably wishes that emails were never invented," but "apart from that we do believe that Prof. Jones has in many ways been scapegoated as a result of what really was a frustration on his part that people were asking for information purely to undermine his research." In Willis' view this did not excuse any failure to deal properly with FOI Act requests, but the committee accepted that Jones had released all the data that he could. It stated: "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".

The committee was careful to point out that its report had been written after a single day of oral testimony and would not be as in-depth as other inquiries. In response to the report, 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 judgement 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 judgement to decide who we spend time responding to. And that has a cost."

Science Assessment Panel

The report of the independent Science Assessment Panel was published on 14 April 2010 and concluded that the panel had seen "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit." It found that the CRU's work had been "carried out with integrity" and had used "fair and satisfactory" methods. The CRU was found to be "objective and dispassionate in their view of the data and their results, and there was no hint of tailoring results to a particular agenda." Instead, "their sole aim was to establish as robust a record of temperatures in recent centuries as possible."

The panel commented that it was "very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians." It found that although the CRU had not made inappropriate use of statistical methods, some of the methods used may not have been the best for the purpose, though it conceded that "it is not clear that better methods would have produced significantly different results." It suggested that the CRU could have done more to document and archive its work, data and algorithms and found that the scientists were "ill prepared" for the amount of public attention generated by their work, commenting that "as with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal." The media and other scientific organisations were criticised for having "sometimes neglected" to reflect the uncertainties, doubts and assumptions of the work done by the CRU. The UK Government's policy of charging for access to scientific date was described as "inconsistent with policies of open access to data promoted elsewhere." The panel was also critical of the CRU's detractors, stating that it "deplore the tone of much of the criticism that has been directed at CRU". It found that some of the criticism had been "selective and uncharitable" and critics had displayed "a lack of awareness" of the difficulties of research in this area.

Speaking at a press conference to announce the report, the panel's chair, Lord Oxburgh, stated that his team had found "absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever" and that "whatever was said in the emails, the basic science seems to have been done fairly and properly." He said that many of the criticisms and allegations of scientific misconduct had been made by people "who do not like the implications of some of the conclusions" reached by the CRU's scientists. The repeated FOI requests made by climate change sceptic Steve McIntyre and others "could have amounted to a campaign of harassment" and the issue of how FOI laws should be applied in an academic context remained unresolved. Another panel member, Professor David Hand, commended the CRU for being explicit about the inherent uncertainties in its research data, commenting that "there is no evidence of anything underhand - the opposite, if anything, they have brought out into the open the uncertainties with what they are dealing with."

The UEA's vice-chancellor, Edward Acton, welcomed the panel's findings. Describing its report as "hugely positive", he stated that "it is especially important that, despite a deluge of allegations and smears against the CRU, this independent group of utterly reputable scientists have concluded that there was no evidence of any scientific malpractice." He criticised the way that the emails had been misrepresented, saying that "UEA has already put on record its deep regret and anger that the theft of emails from the University, and the blatant misrepresentation of their contents as revealed both in this report and the previous one by the Science and Technology Select Committee, damaged the reputation of UK climate science." The UEA issued a statement in which it accepted that "things might have been done better." It said that improvements had already been undertaken by the CRU and others in the climate science community and that the University would "continue to ensure that these imperatives are maintained."

See also

• Global warming controversy
• Global warming conspiracy theory

References

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External links

• House of Commons' Science and Technology Select Committee announcement and Report on The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, released 31 March 2010.
• 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 emails 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