date: Sun, 9 Sep 2007 10:42:16 +0100 from: "John Mason, Machynlleth, Wales" subject: Re: Query re - raw data to: "Phil Jones" Thanks for that Phil. I find all the politics quite interesting: I publish in mineralogy and ore deposit formation and never run into much controversy in these relatively mundane subjects! My approach is simply to try and explain, repetitively, just what peer-reviewed science is, and I try to get forum members to understand the difference between that and politically-motivated denialist blogsites! Mind you, having read chapter 2 of George Monbiot's "Heat" last night, it looks like a steep uphill climb! I know George fairly well - he lives here in Machynlleth - and am tempted to suggest he posts to UKWW, but I think the reactions from some of the regulars on there might give us moderators too much work! So for now I shall keep plugging away and posting links to Realclimate as often as possible! Cheers - John John Mason Geological consultancy & Interpretation [1]www.geologywales.co.uk Severe Weather Photographer [2]www.geologywales.co.uk/storms Director, Tornado and Storm Research Organisation [3]www.torro.org.uk ----- Original Message ----- From: [4]Phil Jones To: [5]John Mason, Machynlleth, Wales Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 5:12 PM Subject: Re: Query re - raw data John, Just off home, but had a look at Climate Audit. A thread has just gone up on duplication of time series. It might be worth pointing some people to this link. Needless to say the document makes the whole issue exceedingly complex. I read the document ages ago, and then asked someone at NCDC what it meant. Steve McIntyre is reading far too much into it, as usual. Smithsonian, WWR and UCAR are not different sources - they are all the same. The different sources referred to in the document are different datasets released by National Met Services. They send the data each month, then send it again each decade from the 1960s onwards. They have made changes sometimes. So the 1960s may have changed the 1950s, the 1970s the 1960s and so on. Cheers Phil At 16:31 07/09/2007, you wrote: Thanks, Phil. We shall see what these characters make of that. I suspect it will be a case of "And Lo! it came to pass that the smiting did continue for evermore..." Cheers - John John Mason Geological consultancy & Interpretation [6]www.geologywales.co.uk Severe Weather Photographer [7]www.geologywales.co.uk/storms Director, Tornado and Storm Research Organisation [8]www.torro.org.uk ----- Original Message ----- From: [9]Phil Jones To: [10]johntherock@btopenworld.com Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 2:14 PM Subject: FW: Query re - raw data John, Have had a look at the discussion blog you help moderate, and you seem reasonable. You try to keep discussions civil and cut out ad hominens. I have learnt over recent years to be careful when responding as some of my emails later (sometimes years later) appear on various blog sites. I occasionally look at some of them, and good to hear that you get your information from IPCC and Real Climate. I eventually found the quote you are referring to. You have probably tried to get British climate and weather data out of the Met Office - through BADC. You can for research purposes, but not if anything commercial is being undertaken. This situation (which the Met Office started by the way) is common around the world. Only the US, Australia, Canada and a few other countries put their data up for all to use. Even then they put up the raw (as measured) data and have homogenized data on another page (which is often not linked from the one with the raw data). CRU has been collecting the same data (as NCDC and also GISS in the USA) over the last 25 years. We get access to real time data (monthly averages which come over a WMO system called GTS - the CLIMAT messages). We have an agreement with the Met Office Hadley Centre. We also have agreements with a number of other Met Services around the world (and also some individual scientists) not to pass on the data to third parties, but we are able to make the gridded products available - the HadCRUT3 and CRUTEM3 datasets. It is the gridded products that other scientists want. We have spent a lot of time over the last 25 years assessing the quality of all the data - improving some regions/countries when we gain access to improvements. Although we've made lots of adjustments (which are documented back in the mid-1980s), it became clear to us that this type of work is best done in the regions/countries as it these groups that have the full station histories. Not many countries though have the resources to do this. We still make checks periodically, but all the merging takes time and resources. The national datasets generally come with national numbers which we then have to determine are stations we had (so replace) or are new. GISS have released their data (principally GHCN) but Jim Hansen and others are being lambasted for not releasing the code they use. It is all described in their papers though and is easily reproducible. Our method of gridding is described in numerous papers. Most recently this was documented at [11]http://www.hadobs.org/ if you then click on CRUTEM3 and then the paper at the bottom right under references. I can't send you the full pdf from JGR as it is too large to email. My reason for mentioning this is that if we did release the data we use, the same lambasting would happen to us - it does anyway - as your email attests to. What I would do, in response to the comment, is to suggest that the skeptics derive their own gridded temperature data. They can use the GISS data, and then assess which stations they want to use etc. They don't want to do this, as it is lots of hard work, and it is much easier to criticize. I've suggested this to some of them in the past and many other people have as well. Whatever the outcome of such an analysis, it would be far more constructive than the continued criticism, which most people I know (on this issue and many others like Hockey Sticks etc) just ignore. In short if they think we're wrong prove it. Finally, one other thing. The first paper we produced on this subject was back in 1982. There have, as I said, been numerous ones up to the one you can get from last year by Brohan et al.. Why now, are all the requests coming? The whole global warming debate doesn't hinge on this one dataset, as is obvious from the latest IPCC report. If the italics come through, you can use parts of the paragraphs I've italicised. These are the 3rd, 4th and 6th paragraphs. Cheers Phil -----Original Message----- From: John Mason, Machynlleth, Wales [ [12]mailto:johntherock@btopenworld.com] Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 9:40 AM To: Sheppard Sylv Miss (SCI) Subject: Query re - raw data Hi folks! In my spare time, I have the possibly unenviable job of moderating the UK Weatherworld climate forum and attempting to defend the science against various sceptic activists! One of them has just posted up: "The CRU, whose global temperatures are used in the IPCC and various UN reports and countless media, don't even disclose its raw data and methods to get its temperatures." Is there a useful answer that I could give regarding this quite probably mischievous statement? Cheers - John John Mason Geological consultancy & Interpretation [13]www.geologywales.co.uk Severe Weather Photographer [14]www.geologywales.co.uk/storms Director, Tornado and Storm Research Organisation [15]www.torro.org.uk Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------