cc: Michael Manton date: Fri Jul 16 11:21:16 2004 from: Phil Jones subject: Data access to GHCN etc to: "Thomas C Peterson" Dear Tom and Mike, There is an issue of data access that we should address at the next AOPC. Maybe we can discuss it also when the GCOS Imp. Plan is discussed next month in Geneva. I was alerted to it by Tom a while ago and this has been reiterated by others more recently. I'm being hassled by skeptics to release paleo data and also by others for the station temperature data used in the CRU datasets. Here is an example from the paleo person --- "For example, it is ridiculous that Gordon Jacoby has not archived so much data, or Lonnie Thompson for that matter. Because the data is being immediately used for public policy advocacy, the archiving issue becomes quite material and print publication in microscopic graphs hardly discharges public obligations. In theory, AGU policy prohibits citation of non-archived data sets in its journals (eg. GRL), but the policy is unfortunately not enforced. I have begun trying to encourage some of the funding agencies and journals to apply their existing policies. If you lent your authority to this, they would probably react pretty fast." If AGU adhered to this policy, then the number of people submitting there would reduce dramatically ! The reason for emailing though is that I'm also being hassled by Warwick Hughes for the CRU station dataset. We put up the gridded fields, but not the station data. Over the last year or so, I've told people they can't have the station data - go to the GHCN site and get it. I knew that avenue has been closed, but it got some of them off my back. I'm not that inclined to release it to Hughes (who Mike knows and maybe Tom). All he wants to do is to show how I've made some mistake or used some incorrect data for some stations. There are a number of issues, though: 1. Should Res. 40 stop GHCN data being released? 2. Should I be hiding behind it too? 3. When does IPR kick in with the work I've put in on the CRU data? 4. Should people like this be able to request this kind of data? 5. NCAR release a precursor to GHCN - just WWR/MCDW+lots of other data, but in an unfriendly format. No rush for thoughts/views. A lot of the paleo people just ignore the skeptics. Maybe I should. Cheers Phil 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------