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The Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident, which some have dubbed "Climategate", began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server used by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, England, in the United Kingdom. An unknown individual stole and anonymously disseminated over a thousand e-mails and other documents. The university confirmed that a "criminal breach" of their security systems took place, and expressed concern "that personal information about individuals may have been compromised." Details of the incident have been reported to the police, who are investigating. Phil Jones, Director of the CRU, confirmed that all of the leaked e-mails that had provoked heated debate appeared to be genuine.

Critics have asserted that the e-mails show collusion by climate scientists to withhold scientific information. Other prominent climate scientists, such as Richard Somerville, have called the incident a smear campaign. Jones called charges that the e-mails involve any "untoward" activity "ludicrous", and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research stated that the sceptics have selectively quoted words and phrases out of context in an attempt to sabotage the Copenhagen global climate summit in December.

On November 24, the University of East Anglia announced it would conduct an independent review of the matter, and, one week later, announced that Phil Jones would stand aside temporarily as director of the Unit during the investigation. The review will be headed up by Sir Muir Russell, Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland.

Hacked and leaked documents

Unidentified persons hacked a server used by the Climatic Research Unit, posting online copies of e-mails and documents that they found. The incident is being investigated by Norfolk police and involved the theft of more than 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 other documents, consisting of 160 MB of data in total.

The breach was first discovered after someone hacked the server of the RealClimate website on 17 November and uploaded a copy of the stolen files. 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) with the comment "A miracle just happened". The hack was discovered by Schmidt only a couple of minutes after it had occurred. He temporarily shut down the website and deleted the uploaded file. RealClimate notified the University of East Anglia of the incident.

On 19 November the files were uploaded to a Russian server before being copied to numerous locations across the Internet. An anonymous statement accompanying the e-mails defended the hacking, on the grounds that climate science is "too important to be kept under wraps" and describing the material as "a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents." The stolen material was first publicised on 19 November on The Air Vent, a climate-sceptic blog.

Content of the documents

The leaked material comprised more than 1,000 e-mails, 2,000 documents, as well as commented Fortran source code, pertaining to climate change research covering a period from 1996 until 2009. Some of the e-mails purportedly included discussions of how to combat the arguments of climate change sceptics, unflattering comments about sceptics, queries from journalists, drafts of scientific papers, keeping scientists who have contrary views out of peer-review literature, and talk of destroying various files in order to prevent data being revealed under the Freedom of Information Act. In an interview with The Guardian, Phil Jones, Director of the UEA-CRU, confirmed that the contentious e-mails appeared to be genuine.

On November 24 the UEA-CRU (whose e-mails were leaked) issued a detailed explanation of the contents of the controversial e-mails.

E-mails

Jones e-mail of 16 Nov 1999

An excerpt from one November 1999 e-mail authored by the head of the CRU, Phil Jones, reads:

"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Sceptics cite this sentence as evidence that temperature statistics are being manipulated.

The RealClimate website, in their response to the CRU hack, characterizes the excerpt as follows:

The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the 'trick' is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term "trick" to refer to a "a good way to deal with a problem", rather than something that is "secret", and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the 'decline', it is well known that Keith Briffa's maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the "divergence problem"–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommended not using the post-1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while 'hiding' is probably a poor choice of words (since it is 'hidden' in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

Climate Research journal e-mail of 11 Mar 2003

In one e-mail, as a response to an e-mail indicating that a paper in the scientific journal Climate Research had questioned assertions that the 20th century was abnormally warm, Michael Mann wrote:

"I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."

Michael Mann said to the Wall Street Journal that he didn't feel there was anything wrong in saying "we shouldn't be publishing in a journal that's activist."

Half of the journal's editorial board, including editor-in-chief Hans von Storch, resigned because they felt that publication of the paper in question represented a breakdown in the peer-review process. The publisher had refused to allow von Storch to publish an editorial on the topic, but later the president of the journal's parent company stated that the paper's major findings could not "be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided in the paper. should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication." Nevertheless, von Storch's initial response to the revelations in the leaked e-mails was critical of Jones and Mann. After complaining that the e-mails made him a "subject of frequent mentioning, usually not in a flattering manner", he conjectured that "Another conclusion could be that scientists like Mike Mann, Phil Jones and others should no longer participate in the peer-review process or in assessment activities like IPCC."

Trenberth e-mail of 12 Oct 2009

An email written by Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, discussed gaps in understanding of recent temperature variations: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't," Trenberth wrote. However, Trenberth told the Associated Press that the phrase was actually used in an article he authored calling for improvement in measuring global warming to describe unusual data, such as rising sea surface temperatures. The word travesty refers to what Trenberth sees as an inadequate observing system that, were it more adequate, would be able to track the warming he believes is there.

Calls for inquiries

In the United Kingdom and United States, there were calls for official inquiries into issues raised by the documents, and calls for Jones' firing or resignation. Climate change sceptic Lord Lawson, who in 2005 called for the IPCC to be shut down, 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", and the climate sceptic, Senator Jim Inhofe also planned to demand an inquiry. Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said: "There needs to be an assurance that these email messages have not revealed inappropriate conduct in the preparation of journal articles and in dealing with requests from other researchers for access to data. This will probably require investigations both by the host institutions and by the relevant journals." A government scientific agency could also conduct an inquiry, he said.

A spokesman for the Met Office, a government agency which works with the Climate Research Unit 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."

University of East Anglia response

Shortly after the release of the e-mails, 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". George Monbiot strongly criticized the UEA's response, calling it "a total trainwreck: a textbook example of how not to respond." Monbiot continued, "The handling of this crisis suggests that nothing has been learnt by climate scientists in this country from 20 years of assaults on their discipline."

The university announced on 1 December that Phil Jones is to stand aside temporarily as director of the Unit during the investigation. Two days later, the university announced that Sir Muir Russell will head up the review, and will "examine e-mail exchanges to determine whether there is evidence of suppression or manipulation of data" as well as review 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, investigation will 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".

IPCC promises investigation

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) promises an investigation into claims that the CRU manipulated data to favour the conclusion that human activity is driving global warming. Pachauri stated, "We certainly don't want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail."

Reactions to the incident

George Monbiot has asked, "Do these revelations justify the sceptics' claims that this is 'the final nail in the coffin' of global warming theory?" and concluded, "Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists." He described the incident as a "major blow" and that the "emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging". He was also concerned by what he saw as attempts to conceal and even destroy information that was subject to a freedom of information request, and efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of an IPCC report.

According to the University of East Anglia, the documents and e-mails had been selected deliberately to undermine the strong consensus that human activity is affecting the world's climate in ways that are potentially dangerous. The university said in a statement: "The selective publication of some stolen e-mails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way".

The CRU's researchers said in a statement 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 e-mails involve any "untoward" activity "ludicrous." Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, said that sceptics were "taking these words totally out of context to make something trivial appear nefarious", and called the entire incident a careful, "high-level, orchestrated smear campaign to distract the public about the nature of the climate change problem." Kevin E. Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research said that he was appalled at the release of the e-mails but thought that it might backfire against climate sceptics, as the messages would show "the integrity of scientists." He has also said that the "theft" may be aimed at undermining talks at the December, 2009 Copenhagen global climate summit.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has "expressed concern that the hacked emails would weaken global resolve to curb greenhouse-gas emissions".

The American Meteorological Society stated that the incident did not affect the society's position on climate change. They pointed to the breadth of evidence for human influence on climate, stating "For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true — which is not yet clearly the case — the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited."

The Union of Concerned Scientists was critical of climate change sceptics using the stolen e-mails to attack climate science, commenting: "Unfortunately for these conspiracy theorists, what the e-mails show are simply scientists at work, grappling with key issues, and displaying the full range of emotions and motivations characteristic of any urgent endeavor. Any suggestions that these e-mails will affect public and policymakers' understanding of climate science give far too much credence to blog chatter and boastful spin from groups opposed to addressing climate change."

Climatologist James Hansen said that the controversy has "no effect on the science" and that while some of the e-mails reflect poor judgement, the evidence for human-made climate change is overwhelming.

Judith Curry, a climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta who agrees with the mainstream view of global warming, wrote that the e-mails reflect a problem with scientists lacking openness about their data and attacking those they disagree with: "t is difficult to understand the continued circling of the wagons by some climate researchers with guns pointed at sceptical researchers by apparently trying to withhold data and other information of relevance to published research, thwart the peer review process, and keep papers out of assessment reports. Scientists are of course human, and short-term emotional responses to attacks and adversity are to be expected, but I am particularly concerned by this apparent systematic and continuing behavior from scientists that hold editorial positions, serve on important boards and committees and participate in the major assessment reports. It is these issues revealed in the HADCRU emails that concern me the most "

Computerworld magazine cited the view of the RealClimate blog that what was not contained in the e-mails was the most interesting element: "There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to 'get rid of the MWP' , no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no 'marching orders' from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords." The science historian Spencer R. Weart, interviewed in the Washington Post, commented that the theft of the e-mails and the reaction to them was "a symptom of something entirely new in the history of science: Aside from crackpots who complain that a conspiracy is suppressing their personal discoveries, we've never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance. Even the tobacco companies never tried to slander legitimate cancer researchers."

The Daily Telegraph reported that academics and climate change researchers have dismissed allegations from sceptics that the e-mails are evidence of a collusion or international conspiracy, saying that nothing in the e-mails proves wrongdoing.

Some people have asserted that the e-mails showed scientists had colluded to overstate the case for man-made global warming and manipulated the evidence. Criticism of the content of the e-mails tended to focus on ethical concerns related to the discrediting of sceptics and withholding of information. Patrick J. Michaels said some e-mails showed an effort to block the release of data for independent review. He said some messages discussed discrediting him by claiming he knew his research was wrong in his doctoral dissertation. "This shows these are people willing to bend rules and go after other people's reputations in very serious ways."

Myron Ebell, the Director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the e-mails showed that some climate scientists "are more dedicated to promoting the alarmist political agenda than in scientific research. Some of the e-mails that I have read are blatant displays of personal pettiness, unethical conniving, and twisting the science to support their political position."

Climatologist Hans von Storch (who concurs in the consensus finding of human-influenced global warming) said that the University of East Anglia (UEA) had "violated a fundamental principle of science" by refusing to share data with other researchers. "They play science as a power game," he said.

Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, an outspoken sceptic of the scientific consensus on climate change, said "Ninety-five percent of the nails were in the coffin prior to this week. Now they are all in."

During the annual Queen's Speech debate in the House of Commons on 24 November 2009, the former Conservative Cabinet minister Peter Lilley challenged the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband over the e-mails. Miliband declined to comment on the content of the e-mails but commented: "We should be cautious about using partial emails that have been leaked to somehow cast doubt on the scientific consensus that there is. That is very dangerous and irresponsible because the scientific consensus is clear."

See also

• Global warming controversy
• Hockey stick controversy

References

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