FOIA – Anthony Watts

Just for fun, while dredging around in the FOIA emails, I put into my search command “Anthony Watts”. Were these folks talking about Anthony, or not? Well, turns out they were! Then I put in “wattsupwith” and got more ‘hits’.

Well, that’s got to be an interesting set of email for some folks to look through! (Yes, I also looked for “chiefio” and “E.M.Smith”, but “no joy” – then again when these emails were made I was very much new to the whole Global Warming thing and was still asking questions at Real Climate and didn’t even know who they were…)

Realize that this particular search will not find email that has “Anthony” on one line and “Watts” on the next line. Nor will if find A. Watts or Anthony W. So this is a minimal set and their might be another one lurking in there somewhere. I did do a search on “watts” and got a whole lot of emails talking about other kinds of watts… and a quick scan of those did not turn up any added Watts emails.

The general theme that I think describes these best is “Damage Control” and “message management”. Responses to folks at magazines, responses to web postings. There is one that discusses tweaking the data to make the 1940s come out right. Several complain about F.O.I.A. requests and the expectation to share data (some others assure the data is all there on the web site, but IIRC that was intermediate processed data-food-product being palmed off as temperature instrumental data….)

All in all, an interesting set.

Links

If you would like to read any of these emails, just hit this link and pick out the email that has the same number/name:

Link to online archive of emails.

For a general entry point into prior FOIA postings, look here:

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/foia/

Each of the articles on a F.O.I.A. topic will be assigned to the FOIA Category (at the right edge of the page). You can get directly to that list (which will be in reverse chronological order) here:

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/foia-climategate/

Whats Watts?

Just one note: It does look like “folks noticed” and were seriously influenced by the work done by Anthony Watts.

So, without further ado, here is the list of emails that talk about Anthony:

The list for “Anthony Watts”:

0600.txt

date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:30:08 -0400
from: “Thomas.R.Karl” Thomas.R.Karl@noaa.gov
subject: Re: Keenan, China etc
to: Phil Jones p.jones@uea.ac.uk

Hi Phil,
Well… there will always be some outliers. Would be great to get IDAG and DAARWG on the
same timeframe. Although let’s hope we don’t get the weather we had last Dec and early Jan
in Boulder this year!
Regards, Tom
P.S. We are getting blogged all over for a cover-up of poor global station and US stations
we use. They claim NCDC is in a scandal by not providing observer’s addresses. In any
case Anthony Watts has photographed about 350 stations and finds using our criteria that
about 15% are acceptable. I am trying to get some our folks to develop a method to switch
over to using the CRN sites, at least in the USA.

Phil Jones said the following on 9/11/2007 9:51 AM:
Tom,

Have thought of you when sending the Wei-Chyung Keenan stuff.
Ferris and the DAARWG dates though reminded me of the above
again. Making the data available seems to make no difference to
Keenan’s response ! Hopefully you’ll report an update to DAARWG!
IDAG is meeting Jan 28-30 in Boulder. You couldn’t make the
last one at Duke. Have told Ferris about IDAG, as I thought DAARWG
might be meeting in Boulder. Jan 31-Feb1 would be very convenient
for me – one transatlantic flight, I would feel good about my carbon
bootprint and I would save the planet!
Cheers
Phil

0755.txt

date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:56:55 -0400
from: Thomas C Peterson Thomas.C.Peterson@noaa.gov
subject: Re: Lots about USHCN on Climate Audit
to: Phil Jones p.jones@uea.ac.uk

FYI, the radio interview seemed to go well. I must say in fairness
that, considering the photographs of how not to observe temperature on
Anthony Watts’ blog, http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather_stations/
, Mr. Watts gave a well reasoned position. For example, when asked if
the stations with poor siting were removed from the analysis would it
show less warming, Mr. Watts said we won’t know until the analysis is
complete.

-Tom
Phil Jones said the following on 5/29/2007 6:14 AM:
>
>> Tom,
> I can’t find the stations Maryville and Lake Spaulding that
> have the pictures here in recent Climate Audit threads in the
> CRU database.
>
> CA seem to be working for Roger Pielke now, getting him
> loads of pictures !
>
> Cheers
> Phil
> Prof. Phil Jones
> Climatic Research Unit
> School of Environmental Sciences
> University of East Anglia
—————————————————————————-
Thomas C. Peterson, Ph.D.
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

1998.txt

date: Thu Feb 28 12:50:55 2008
from: Phil Jones p.jones@uea.ac.uk
subject: Re: cold winter in context… a story
to: Andrew Revkin anrevk@nytimes.com

Andy,
It does seem to be jumping on a bit of cold weather. We do a press release
every year – even this is slightly too often. I’ve never done one about an individual
month. Occasionally journalists call about warm periods, but I give them the message I’ve
given you.
The skeptics also leap on any paper that supports their views and ignore
most others – or try to pour cold water on them. They mostly look at observation
papers and ignore modelling ones, as they believe by default models are wrong!
Cheers
Phil
At 12:28 28/02/2008, you wrote:

great. thanks very much, phil.
what’s amusing, in a way, is how the ‘skeptics’ jump on a cold patch as evidence of
global cooling but attack enviros for highlighting warming trend.

Andy,
HadCRUT3 numbers on the Watts website are OK.
As has been said the Jan08 value is just one month. The NH winter and last autumn
have been cool, but this was to be expected given the ongoing La Nina event. The ENSO
phase often changes around April/May so keep a watch on the equatorial Pacific over
the next few months. We could go into an El Nino, stay in La Nina or go neutral. Based
on the La Nina state we are in (and were in at the start of the year) the Met Office
and UEA issued a forecast for 2008 (for global T).
[1]http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080103.html
Forecast was for a cooler year in 2008 – coolest since 2000. As has been said
natural variability dominates on monthly to up to 2-3 year timescales. Some of
this natural variability relates to ENSO, but there is also NAM (NAO) and SAM
as well – the latter on slightly shorter timescales than ENSO.
Large El Nino’s tend to warm annual global T by about +0.1-0.15 deg C (as in 98)
while La Nina’s cool by similar amounts. Global T also tends to lag the ENSO phase
by about 6 months. These fluctuations on interannual
timescales are almost an order of magnitude larger than the +0.02 deg C per year
expected from anthropogenic influences.
Natural variability has always been with us and will continue to be so in the future.
Anthropogenic influences more on decadal and longer timescales.
If you look at the map for Jan08 you’ll see that Northern Europe has been
well above normal, but not near record levels. In the UK snowdrops
and crocuses have been out for weeks, daffodils out now and blossom
on many trees also out several weeks early. We’ve been lucky this winter,
but it is down to a positive NAO. A positive NAO also tends to make the
Eastern Mediterranean and the western Middle East experience a cool
winter. The typical NAO influence on eastern North America is less
evident, but this is probably due to the stronger La Nina influence.
Cheers
Phil
Cheers
Phil
At 20:23 27/02/2008, Andrew Revkin wrote:

As you all are aware, a very vocal and plugged-in crew has been making much of the
recent downturn in temps.
Because the ‘Average Joe’ out there is only hearing radio soundbites about the sun
turning off, or cable-news coverage or some stray TV image of snow in baghdad (and
particularly with a big ‘skeptics conference’ coming next week), I think it’s important
to do a story putting a cold stretch in context against the evidence for the long-term
warming trajectory from greenhouse forcing. Would need input from you by end of Thursday
ideally.
I’ve already queried a heap of Arctic hands on sea-ice fluctuations with intrsting
responses (as I wrote 10/2/07, it’s still mainly first-year thin ice, and — by volume
of sea ice — there ain’t much).
Also need to explore questions related to solar trends.
First request (for those of you from the four groups tracking temps) is for you to to
look at the data below. Anthony Watts has (potentially usefully, if the data are
accurate) compiled the four main ongoing efforts to track things. Can you tell me if the
datasets he’s used are correct for your groups??
here’s text file
[2]http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/4metrics_temp_anomalies.txt
here’s his graph
[3]http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/giss-had-uah-rss_global_anomaly_1
979-2008.png
We’d like to explore this graphically as well, perhaps looking at winter temps in
isolation, or just doing something akin to what’s been done above.
And then there are the substance questions. I’d love it if you’d weigh in on any or all,
either in an email or call.
1) How unusual is the current downturn? In particular, in relation to ENSO and other
cycles that might cut the other way etc? Any ‘easy’ explanations, or is it good
old-fashioned variability?
2) Anything pop out when you look at the hemispheres as opposed to global?
3) Do you see ANY evidence of solar activity playing a role, either background or
foreground?
4) Presumably global HEATING is continuing apace, even as global TEMP fluctuates. Is
that right, and/or are there ocean data showing ongoing heating of seas etc?
5) The folks using the cold snap to attack greenhouse theory include some of the same
people who blamed ‘hot heads’ for using hot years to support their view of what’s
coming. Does that seem the case to you ?
6) Takehome message?
As always, your thoughts are much appreciated. Feel free to respond to me alone or to
the group to inspire some multi-logue.
—
Andrew C. Revkin
The New York Times / Science
620 Eighth Ave., NY, NY 10018
Tel: 212-556-7326 Mob: 914-441-5556
Fax: 509-357-0965
[4]www.nytimes.com/revkin

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit
—
Andrew C. Revkin
The New York Times / Science
620 Eighth Ave., NY, NY 10018

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
—————————————————————————-

2266.txt

cc: gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov, jhansen@giss.nasa.gov, christy@nsstc.uah.edu, mears@remss.com, frank.wentz@remss.com, p.jones@uea.ac.uk, shs@stanford.edu, wallace@atmos.washington.edu, cdcamp@amath.washington.edu, lean@demeter.nrl.navy.mil, david.parker@metoffice.com, santer1@llnl.gov, peter.thorne@metoffice.gov.uk, manabe@splash.princeton.edu, j.m.gregory@reading.ac.uk, meehl@ucar.edu
date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:37:37 -0700
from: Kevin Trenberth trenbert@ucar.edu
subject: Re: cold winter in context… a story
to: Andrew Revkin

Andy
I am in Germany and not up to speed on this. However, past experience suggests that the
weather signal is dominant at any instant and ENSO related variability far overwhelms any
greenhouse signal in any year. It is well established that there is a moderate to strong
La Nina underway. That should be the null hypothesis. La Nina not only cools the tropical
Pacific as cold anomalies built up over time and buried beneath the surface emerge, but
also radically changes the atmospheric circulation across the world, especially in the
winter hemisphere. This changes the jet stream, storm tracks, cloud, precipitation and
temperatures. These are general statements, not ones specific to this event, and no doubt
detailed analysis of this event is available from CPC NOAA.
In short, this says nothing about long-term global warming. In fact such things should be
expected. Weather and climate variability continues.
Kevin
Andrew Revkin wrote:

As you all are aware, a very vocal and plugged-in crew has been making much of the recent
downturn in temps.

Because the ‘Average Joe’ out there is only hearing radio soundbites about the sun turning
off, or cable-news coverage or some stray TV image of snow in baghdad (and particularly
with a big ‘skeptics conference’ coming next week), I think it’s important to do a story
putting a cold stretch in context against the evidence for the long-term warming trajectory
from greenhouse forcing. Would need input from you by end of Thursday ideally.

I’ve already queried a heap of Arctic hands on sea-ice fluctuations with intrsting
responses (as I wrote 10/2/07, it’s still mainly first-year thin ice, and — by volume of
sea ice — there ain’t much).

Also need to explore questions related to solar trends.

First request (for those of you from the four groups tracking temps) is for you to to look
at the data below. Anthony Watts has (potentially usefully, if the data are accurate)
compiled the four main ongoing efforts to track things. Can you tell me if the datasets
he’s used are correct for your groups??

here’s text file

[1]http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/4metrics_temp_anomalies.txt

here’s his graph

[2] “http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/giss-had-uah-rss_global_anomaly_1979-
2008.png” target=”_blank” http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/giss-had-uah-rss_global_anomaly_1979-
2008.png

We’d like to explore this graphically as well, perhaps looking at winter temps in
isolation, or just doing something akin to what’s been done above.

And then there are the substance questions. I’d love it if you’d weigh in on any or all,
either in an email or call.

1) How unusual is the current downturn? In particular, in relation to ENSO and other cycles
that might cut the other way etc? Any ‘easy’ explanations, or is it good old-fashioned
variability?

2) Anything pop out when you look at the hemispheres as opposed to global?

3) Do you see ANY evidence of solar activity playing a role, either background or
foreground?

4) Presumably global HEATING is continuing apace, even as global TEMP fluctuates. Is that
right, and/or are there ocean data showing ongoing heating of seas etc?

5) The folks using the cold snap to attack greenhouse theory include some of the same
people who blamed ‘hot heads’ for using hot years to support their view of what’s coming.
Does that seem the case to you ?

6) Takehome message?

As always, your thoughts are much appreciated. Feel free to respond to me alone or to the
group to inspire some multi-logue.

Andrew C. Revkin
The New York Times / Science

****************
Kevin E. Trenberth e-mail: [4]trenbert@ucar.edu
Climate Analysis Section, NCAR [5]www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/
P. O. Box 3000,
Boulder, CO 80307

The list for “wattsupwith” search text:

As there are a lot more of these, I’m not going to put all the text here, though for most of these it’s just trimming signature lines. Hit the link if you want the whole thing. I’ll also be putting a bit of comment and / or a small bit of bolding in some places.

What I find most striking about these emails is two things.

1) They so clearly talk about tailoring the adjustments to get the desired effects, not science as a reason to do it.

2) The ‘who talks to whom’ shows that NOAA / NCDC / NCAR and Hadley / UEA / CRU are NOT independent data sets. They are near clones manicured to be kept in agreement.

It’s also pretty clear than any critique that stings is either ignored, treated as an attack or propaganda, or sometimes the data are ‘trimmed’ to remove the issue… See 2640.txt in particular for an example of manicuring…

0447.txt

[Gee, and modest too… -EMS]

date: Fri May 8 09:00:42 2009
from: Phil Jones p.jones@uea.ac.uk
subject: Re: Schles suggestion
to: Gavin Schmidt gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov

Dear Gavin – or should I say the Conscience of Climate Science,

Here’s a couple of links
[1]http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2009/3618cap_trade.html
[2]http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/founding-director-of-the-tyndall-centre-for-clima
te-change-time-to-ditch-consensus/
Mike isn’t in disagreement with the science, just what we might do about it!
Conscience could be taken to mean ‘against science’ or switched around to be ‘science
con’.
Hadn’t really considered the construction of this word in my 57 years!
Cheers
Phil

1346.txt

Looks like someone was posing. Will the REAL P. Jones please stand up! -EMS]

date: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:02:27 -0400
from: Thomas C Peterson Thomas.C.Peterson@noaa.gov
subject: Re: An awful paper!!!
to: P.Jones@uea.ac.uk

No, I mean the USP, e.g.,
[1]http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/ncdc-changes-from-national-record-keeper
-to-advocacy-group/
Identity theft – if you can’t trust bloggers, who can you trust? Do you think it was
malicious (someone posing as you) or just another Phil Jones whom someone helped along by
giving his comment your picture?
Tom
[2]P.Jones@uea.ac.uk said the following on 8/5/2008 12:43 PM:

Hi Tom,
Do you mean the CCSP Report? Copies just arrived
in CRU today – so thanks.

I had my identity nicked last night. A Philip Jones
wrote something to the Danish Govt. Someone in Italy saw
it – found me on Google, so attached my picture to it
and the CRU logo. Had to involve UEA as a threat
to remove it !!

Cheers
Phil

Thanks for keeping me in the loop, Phil. Our Unified Synthesis Product
is now getting hit pretty hard. I just keep telling myself that when
they attack one personally, it means they don’t have any science to
attack on. The latest is that one of our photos added just to
illustrate the points had been photoshopped by the person we bought it
from. Horrors!
Regards,
Tom P.

1423.txt

date: Thu Mar 19 17:02:53 2009
from: Phil Jones

subject: Re: See the link below
to: santer1@llnl.gov

Ben,
I don’t know whether they even had a meeting yet – but I did say I would
send something to their Chief Exec.
In my 2 slides worth at Bethesda I will be showing London’s UHI
and the effect that it hasn’t got any bigger since 1900. It’s easy
to do with 3 long time series. It is only one urban site (St James Park),
but that is where the measurements are from. Heathrow has a bit
of a UHI and it has go bigger.
I’m having a dispute with the new editor of Weather. I’ve complained
about him to the RMS Chief Exec. If I don’t get him to back down, I won’t
be sending any more papers to any RMS journals and I’ll be resigning from the RMS.
The paper is about London and its UHI!
Cheers
Phil
At 16:48 19/03/2009, you wrote:

Thanks, Phil. The stuff on the website is awful. I’m really sorry you have to deal with
that kind of crap.
If the RMS is going to require authors to make ALL data available – raw data PLUS
results from all intermediate calculations – I will not submit any further papers to RMS
journals.
Cheers,
Ben
Phil Jones wrote:

Paul,

I sent you this last night, but in another email. I should have sent you two
emails – apologies. The issues were not linked. This email is to bring your
attention to the link at the end.
The next few sentences repeat what I said last might.
I had been meaning to email you about the RMS and IJC issue of data availability
for numbers and data used in papers that appear in RMS journals. This results from
the issue that arose with the paper by Ben Santer et al in IJC last year. Ben has made
the data available that this complainant wanted. The issue is that this is intermediate
data. The raw data that Ben had used to derive the intermediate data was all fully
available. If you’re going to consider asking authors to make some or all of the
data available, then they had done already. The complainant didn’t want to have
to go to the trouble of doing all the work that Ben had done.
I hope this is clear.
Another issue that should be considered as well is this.
With many papers, we’re using Met Office observations. We’ve abstracted these
from BADC to use them in the papers. We’re not allowed to make these available
to others. We’d need to get the Met Office’s permission in all cases.
This email came overnight – from Tom Peterson, who works at NCDC in Asheville.

[1]http://
wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/18/finally-an-honest-quantification-of-urban-warming-by-a-ma
jor-climate-scientist/
“Phil Jones, the director of the Hadley Climate Center in the UK.”

We all know that this is not my job. The paper being referred to appeared in JGR
last year. The paper is
Jones, P.D., Lister, D.H. and Li, Q., 2008: Urbanization effects in large-scale
temperature records, with an emphasis on China. /J. Geophys. Res/. *113*, D16122,
doi:10.1029/2008/JD009916.
The paper clearly states where I work – CRU at UEA. There is no mention of the Hadley
Centre!
There is also no about face as stated on the web page.
Sending this as it gives a good example of the sort of people you are dealing
with when you might be considering changes to data policies at the RMS.
Several years ago I decided there was no point in responding to issues raised
on blog sites. Ben has made the same decision as well.
There are probably wider issues due to climate change becoming more main stream
in the more popular media that the RMS might like to consider. I just think you should
be aware of some of the background. CRU has had numerous FOI requests since the
beginning of 2007. The Met Office, Reading, NCDC and GISS have had as well – many
related to IPCC involvement. I know the world changes and the way we do things changes,
but these requests and the sorts of simple mistakes, should not have an influence
on the way things have been adequately dealt with for over a century.

Cheers
Phil

2640.txt

date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:22:50 -0600
from: Tom Wigley wigley@ucar.edu
subject: Re: 1940s
to: Phil Jones p.jones@uea.ac.uk

Thanks Phil.

Re increase after 1949, I should have remembered this. It has the same
effect, but better. I’ll send you some ENSO out results later — I do
it as in my GRL paper, ENSO and volcs out together iteratively, and
252-month (maybe 251) running removals. This makes a difference. Re the
ppt, which is NH and which is SH? Also, what is the gray “uncorrected”
line in the other plot? This is the raw data?

Can I use the data in your ppts? Just for the globe. I’m thinking that
the new values will be out before my work is done, and it will really
help to get a head start. Do you have numbers?

Tom.
+++++++++++++++++++++++

Phil Jones wrote:
>
> Tom,
> A few thoughts
>
> http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0442/preprint/2009/pdf/10.1175_2009JCLI3089.1.pdf
>
> This is a link to the longer Thompson et al paper. It isn’t yet out in
> final form – Nov09 maybe?
>
> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/24/a-look-at-the-thompson-et-al-paper-hi-tech-wiggle-matching-and-removal-of-natural-variables/
>
> is a link to wattsupwiththat – not looked through this apart from a
> quick scan. Dave Thompson just emailed me this over the weekend and said
> someone had been busy! They seemed to have not fully understood what
> was done.
>
> Have looked at the plots. I’m told that the HadSST3 paper is fairly
> near to being submitted, but I’ve still yet to see a copy. More SST data
> have been added for the WW2 and WW1 periods, but according to John
> Kennedy they have not made much difference to these periods.
>
> Here’s the two ppts I think I showed in Boulder in June. These were
> from April 09, so don’t know what these would look like now. SH is on
> the left and adjustment there seems larger, for some reason – probably
> just British ships there?
>
> Maybe I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying, but the adjustments
> won’t reduce the 1940s blip but enhance it. It won’t change the 1940-44
> period, just raise the 10 years after Aug 45.
>
> I expect MOHC are looking at the NH minus SH series re the aerosols.
> My view is that a cooler temps later in the 1950s and 1960s it is easier
> to explain.
>
> Land warming in the 1940s and late 1930s is mainly high latitude in NH.
>
> One other thing – MOHC are also revising the 1961-90 normals. This will
> likely have more effect in the SH.
>
> With the SH around 1910s there is the issue of exposure problems in
> Australia – see Neville’s paper.
> This shouldn’t be an issue in NZ – except maybe before 1880, but could
> be in southern South America. New work in Spain suggest screens got
> renewed about 1900, so maybe this happened in Chile and Argentina, but
> Mossmann was head of the Argentine NMS so he may have got them to use
> Stevenson screens early.
>
> Neville has never been successful getting any OZ funding to sort out
> pre-1910 temps everywhere except Qld.
>
> Here’s a paper in CC on European exposure problems. There is also one
> on Spanish series.
>
> Cheers
> Phil

> At 06:25 28/09/2009, Tom Wigley wrote:
>> Phil,
>>
>> Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly
>> explain the 1940s warming blip.
>>
>> If you look at the attached plot you will see that the
>> land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know).
>>
>> So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC,
>> then this would be significant for the global mean — but
>> we’d still have to explain the land blip.
>>
>> I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an
>> ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of
>> ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common
>> forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of
>> these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are
>> 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity
>> plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things
>> consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.
>>
>> Removing ENSO does not affect this.
>>
>> It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip,
>> but we are still left with “why the blip”.
>>
>> Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol
>> effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced
>> ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling
>> in the NH — just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols.
>>
>> The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note — from
>> MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can
>> get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal
>> solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987
>> (and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s
>> makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it
>> currently is not) — but not really enough.
>>
>> So … why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem?
>> (SH/NH data also attached.)
>>
>> This stuff is in a report I am writing for EPRI, so I’d
>> appreciate any comments you (and Ben) might have.
>>
>> Tom.

3021.txt

date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:19:26 +0100
from: mike@tuppambr.demon.co.uk
subject: A couple of questions
to: p.jones@uea.ac.uk

Dr. Jones
I apologise for this intrusion!
I’m sure you are aware of the drivel posted on climateaudit –
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6654#comments
and wattsupwiththat
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
I have posted there under the name of thefordprefect. For a year or so.
A bit of background so you can confirm my name. About 2 years ago I was involved with some robust exchanges on a financial BB (ADVFN) and have been taken to court for defamation – the first judgement (now unfortunately appealed!) is here (my name is Tuppen)
http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2008/1797.html&query=advfn&method=all
I can post on ADVFN or climateaudit under my pseudonym of thefordprefect to “prove” my credentials.
I find the current exchange on climateaudit to be very childish and have said so many times. In doing so I have apparently backed your actions and put my interpretation on your statements.
I was therefore hoping that you could reply to these questions. I will if you agree quote your responses (you may also give an “off the record” response which will never leave my computer (please make it obvious which is available for publication!).
1. In this statement:
I should warn you that some data we have we are not supposed top pass on to others.
We can pass on the gridded data – which we do. Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.
There is IPR to consider.

Is I have suggested you are refusing to give IPR info to others and have used a bit of humour with the “25 years or so” part
Is this an incorrect interpretation on my part?
2. Do you actually have agreements available for some of the data that prevents release to non academics?
Are these paper or email. Since the CRU has been around from the late 80s when the anti AGW were not in existence and data was not being questioned I can understand that these may have been verbal or lost in moves of location.
3. I understand that upward of 200 FOI requests have been made on the CRU – the attack being instigated and directed by wattsupwiththat and climateaudit. Do you know the cost to the CRU of processing such a FOI claim?
Whilst I can understand your reluctance to speak on such Blogs I am very concerned that they are actually affecting the populace’s belief in GW. If you repeat the same crud often enough it eventually gets copied to other blogs and so on.
By the way I have pointed them to this document

Click to access ECAD_report_2008.pdf

Which states that some data is unavailable because of IP agreements with the sources (i.e. they have the same problenm as you) – it has been ignored of course!
Thanks
Mike Tuppen (aka thefordprefect)

3188.txt

[A VERY long one. -EMS

date: Mon Aug 24 09:34:17 2009
from: Phil Jones

subject: Re: Data Loss- a couple of questions
to: Daniel Youmans

Dan,

[1]http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/08/climate_researcher_vs_foi_part.html
This alludes to another story (below) where the issues are similar. This is from a
skeptic email listing. It obviously depends on what people think of as
Environmental Information. It is useful to look at the EIR and see what it refers too.
It doesn’t refer to climate data.
In this case with Queens, the tree-ring data come from ages ago, so to my mind
it isn’t current EIR.
One issue is that FOI and EIR probably shouldn’t apply to some things Universities do.
Researchers should be free to determine who they want to work with. In the tree case
there are numerous people in central Europe (alpine countries and Germany especially)
who have chronologies for dating buildings and paintings. Many make reasonable
livings out of doing this work. If their data were made available, they would be out of a
job.
Keenan is a nasty person. I did comply with one of his FOI requests
[2]http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620.htm
Keenan documents things here, but misses out several important facts. SUNYA
(State University of NY at Albany) investigated the claims, and found them to be
groundless.
Keenan agreed not to do anything about his claim until SUNYA investigated
things, but he then published them in a journal (Energy and Environment) whilst
their investigation was ongoing. There is no way of dealing with these people.
A number of US Universities have been beset with claims over the last few years.
The datasets CRU make available on its web site ( eg
[3]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/)
are used by countless climatologists around the world. I’d just look at the number
of citations for this paper.

Mitchell, T.D. and Jones, P.D., 2005: An improved method of constructing a database of
monthly climate observations and associated high-resolution grids. Int. J. Climatol. 25,
693-712.
Also have a look at my citation record on World of Science. Because of my common surname
you have to remove one from biology, but it is still very high. This is a pain to do, so
have a look at this site.
[4]http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/
Person obviously motivated by green politics, but it shows how high many CRU people
are in the list. My position varies on his list, but he’s probably worth contacting.
With the way the UK govt assesses research for RAE (and the new REF) citation counts
are one metric. Proposals and PhD students are other metrics.
Names of people who were in CRU (Tom Wigley, previous Director, Mark New, Jean Palutikof
Robert Marsh, Sarah Raper and Dick Warrick). People still in CRU are me, Keith Briffa,
Tim Osborn who are in the list. Mike Hulme was in CRU, but is now in ENV.
This web site has been updated with citation counts for many of the skeptics. It is
sometimes
difficult to classify people as easily as this though.
Finally
[5]http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/
has a quote from Sir David King, the former govt Chief Scientist.
[6]http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/annrep2008
[7]http://www.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.94246!env_ann_rep_2007.pdf
Have a look at the 2007 Report and the number of ENV people involved
in the IPCC Reports. ENV (including CRU) involvement is more than other
University Dept anywhere in the world. Only the Met Office in the UK and
NOAA (American Met Service) have more.
Away Aug 27-Sept 5.
Cheers
Phil

Peiser, Benny wrote:

CCNet Xtra, 15 August 2009 2009 — Audiatur et altera pars
ANOTHER UK CLIMATE DATA WITHHOLDING SCANDAL IS EMERGING
————————————————–
They are my data. –Peter M. Brown, President of the Tree-Ring Society, April 2007
In other words, even if the research and the researcher’s salary are
fully paid for by the public – as is the case at QUB – the researcher
still regards the data as his or her personal property.
— Doug Keenan, 14 August 2009
I also offered to visit QUB with the case officer, to demonstrate how
quickly the data could be copied (e.g. from floppy disks), and to copy
the data myself. The officer, though, declined my offer, again saying
that she was satisfied with QUB’s explanation. There is a mechanism to
appeal an ICO decision, to a tribunal. I told the case officer that I
wanted to do so. The officer replied that, in order to file an appeal, I
would need a formal Decision Notice from the ICO. I requested a Decision
Notice. The officer then informed me that the ICO would send a Notice,
but that, because they were busy, it would take about two years to do
so.
— Doug Keenan, 14 August 2009
The main problem with dendrochronolgy is one of small sample size. As a
forester, who specialises in forest measurement, I can state that within
any stand of trees, managed or not, there is always variation within the
stand with competition between trees being the main player. Sure annual
weather events will influence the stand as a whole, but often this will
be masked by the within stand competition. If the dendro gets the sample
wrong then any inferences that they might make about the past weather
are also incorrect. I shake my head every time someone quotes from
another dendro study, when will they ever learn?
–Pnadanus, WUWT, 14 August 2009
I speak as a forester who has examined tree rings on zillions of stumps
and cores. Weather events and conditions are not at all obvious in tree
rings. Heck, even fire scars are difficult to discern and fires often
leave no mark at all on individual trees. An unusually mild winter, dry
spring, or a hot summer are all virtually impossible to detect, even if
thousands of contemporaneous ring series are measured to a gnats eyebrow
and compared. –Mike D., WUWT, 14 August 2009
——————–
ANOTHER UK CLIMATE DATA WITHHOLDING SCANDAL IS EMERGING
Watts Up With That, 14 August 2009

[8]http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/14/another-uk-climate-data-scandal-is-emerging/#more-9913

As many WUWT readers know, Steve McIntyre’s tireless quest to get the
raw data that makes up the gridded Hadley Climate Research Unit HadCRUT
dataset has been fraught with delays, FOI denials, and obvious
obfuscation. In some cases the “dog ate my homework” is the excuse. The
UK Register has an excellent summary of the issue.
A similar issue has been brewing in parallel over tree ring data in the
UK. Doug Keenan tells us the story of getting the “ring around” for over
2 years trying to obtain what many would consider a simple and non
controversial data request. – Anthony
Guest Post by Doug Keenan
[Full text of posting removed -E.M.Smith]

—————-
CCNet is a science policy network edited by Benny Peiser. To subscribe,

At 22:25 21/08/2009, you wrote:

Phil,
Thanks very much for that link- it definitely clears up a lot of the questions the
article raises. Have papers/websites reported a similar story to this before? Have
similar issues plagued other institutions?
Lastly, would you be able to give us a short quote on the importance of the work the CRU
does, and the benefits UEA gains from being associated therewith?
Many thanks,
Dan Youmans

News Editor (UEA)
The Project

On 21 Aug 2009, at 10:13, Phil Jones wrote:

Dan,
There is no story here. We have lost no data.
[13]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/availability/
We will be contacting Met Services around the world to see if we can release
their data.
There is an awful lot of history to the story that is doing the rounds on skeptic
websites.
They are just stirring things up – in some attempt to stop politicians doing anything
climate change.
Cheers
Phil
At 22:04 19/08/2009, you wrote:

Dear Professor Jones,
I am contacting you as UEA News Editor of The Project, a new, free, student newspaper
set to launch in Norwich next month.
I am writing to you about the story, published on The Register’s website, about the
CRU’s loss of some data. Would it be possible for you to provide a reaction
[…]
Dan Youmans
News Editor (UEA)

Prof. Phil Jones

Dan Youmans
News Editor (UEA)
The Project

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit

4564.txt

cc: Michael Mann
date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:31:20 -0400 (EDT)
from: Gavin Schmidt gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov
subject: Re: attacks against Keith
to: Phil Jones p.jones@uea.ac.uk, Tim Osborn t.osborn@uea.ac.uk

I agree with Mike. This is not a peer review issue – this is a propaganda
issue. And right now the good guys have conceded the field. The key
observation is that 99% of the people cheerleading have absolutely no idea
what McIntyre has done – they are just happy with the meme. Thus any
response can’t only be a technical one, it has to be one that demonstrates
the integrity of the process – and that requires some degree of further
info that only you guys can supply. The good news is that once something
is out there, people will counter with links to that without themselves
worrying about the detail. We are of course happy to help in any way.

Gavin

PS. Minor issue, but is Keith’s sick leave status being broadcast via a
vacation message on his email or website? I’m wondering if McI knew about
this ahead of time.

=============
Gavin Schmidt
NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies

On Tue, 29 Sep 2009, Michael Mann wrote:

> thanks Phil, Keith,
>
> I don’t think the peer-reviewed literature is an acceptable response to this.
> They don’t bother publishing there anyway. They know they can do more damage
> by just circumventing the process entirely, since they have immediate access
> to the right-wing media. Look at today’s Telegraph, the lie is already out
> there in the public domain.
>
> I think we ought to get some sort of comment out there, perhaps through
> “RealClimate”, though its worth some discussion as far as the best form that
> would take, perhaps in the form of an “editorial” (i.e. group post).
>
> Interested to hear Gavin’s thoughts. got to run off to a meeting now,
>
> mike
>
> On Sep 29, 2009, at 4:20 AM, Phil Jones wrote:
>
>> Mike, Gavin,
>> As Tim has said Keith is making a good recovery and hopes to be back in
>> soon, gradually during October and hopefully full time from November.
>> I talked to him by phone yesterday and sent him and Tom Melvin the
>> threads on CA. As you’re fully aware, trying to figure out what McIntyre
>> has done is going to be difficult. It would be so much easier if they
>> followed normal procedure and wrote up a comment and submitted it to a
>> journal. I looked through the threads yesterday trying to make sense of
>> what he’s done. My suspicion is that he’s brought in other tree ring series
>> from more distant sites, some of which may not even be larch. There are two
>> chronologies that have been used – one called the Polar Urals and one
>> called Yamal. PU is a Schweingruber site with density as well as ring
>> width. The PU reconstruction is therefore not a chronology, but a
>> regression based reconstruction from both MXD and TRW. Yamal is just a ring
>> width series (with lots of sub-fossil material, so much older) from an area
>> some distance (at least 500km) north of PU. It was developed by Hantemirov
>> and Shiyatov and was poorly standardized – corridor method. I also don’t
>> think McIntyre understands the RCS method even though he claims to have a
>> program. The ends and the age structure of the samples are crucial in all
>> this, but I think he just throws series in.
>>
>> I totally agree that these attacks (for want of a better word) are
>> getting worse. Comments on the thread are snide in the extreme, with many
>> saying they see no need to submit the results to a journal! They have
>> proved Keith has manipulated the data, so job done. Difficult to know how
>> to respond to this. They ignore journal comments anyway – just as they will
>> with Grant Foster’s.
>>
>> Hadn’t thought of Senate debates. I’d put this down to the build up to
>> Copenhagen, which is sort of the same.
>>
>> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/24/a-look-at-the-thompson-et-al-paper-hi-tech-wiggle-matching-and-removal-of-natural-variables/
>>
>> is a complete reworking of Dave Thompson’s paper which is in press in J.
>> Climate (online). Looked at this, but they have made some wrong
>> assumptions, but someone has put a lot of work into it. ENSO influences are
>> probably slightly non-linear, but this didn’t stop Mclean et al.
>>
>> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/24/ooops-dutch-meteorological-institute-caught-in-weather-station-siting-failure-moved-station-and-told-nobody/
>>
>> This one is a complete red herring – nothing wrong with De Bilt
>> measurements. This is what it is about according to someone at KNMI
>>
>> The issue you refer to is causing a lot of noise in the Netherlands (even
>> MP’s asking questions to the minister). It seems this is not at all about
>> the observational series (nothing strange is going on), but more related to
>> the “Law on KNMI” and the division of tasks between commercial providers
>> and KNMI to be discussed by parliament soon.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Phil
>>
>> At 08:46 29/09/2009, Tim Osborn wrote:
>>> Hi Mike and Gavin,
>>>
>>> thanks for your emails re McIntyre, Yamal and Keith.

[…]
>>> Regarding Yamal, I’m afraid I know very little about the whole thing —
>>> other than that I am 100% confident that “The tree ring data was
>>> hand-picked to get the desired result” is complete crap. Having one’s
>>> integrity questioned like this must make your blood boil (as I’m sure you
>>> know, with both of you having been the target of numerous such attacks).
[…]
>>> Apart from Keith, I think Tom Melvin here is the only person who could
>>> shed light on the McIntyre criticisms of Yamal. But he can be a rather
>>> loose cannon and shouldn’t be directly contacted about this (also he
>>> wasn’t involved in the Yamal chronology being discussed, though he has
>>> been involved in a regional reconstruction that we’ve recently been
>>> working towards that uses these — and more — data).
[…]
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> Tim
>>>
>>> Dr Timothy J Osborn, Academic Fellow
>>> Climatic Research Unit
>>> School of Environmental Sciences
>>> University of East Anglia
>>>
>> 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
>> —————————————————————————-
> —
> Michael E. Mann
> Professor
> Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC)
> Department of Meteorology

5061.txt

[ We saw some of this text quoted in another email. Here it is the ‘copy list’ and “to” that are interesting

cc: “Glenn McGregor” g.mcgregor@auckland.ac.nz, David Parker david.parker@metoffice.gov.uk, Ben Santer santer1@llnl.gov
date: Thu Mar 19 08:45:33 2009
from: Phil Jones p.jones@uea.ac.uk
subject: See the link below
to: “Chief Exec” chief.exec@rmets.org

Paul,

I sent you this last night, but in another email. I should have sent you two
emails – apologies. The issues were not linked. This email is to bring your
attention to the link at the end.
The next few sentences repeat what I said last might.
I had been meaning to email you about the RMS and IJC issue of data availability
for numbers and data used in papers that appear in RMS journals. This results from
the issue that arose with the paper by Ben Santer et al in IJC last year. Ben has made
the data available that this complainant wanted. The issue is that this is intermediate
data. The raw data that Ben had used to derive the intermediate data was all fully
available. If you’re going to consider asking authors to make some or all of the
data available, then they had done already. The complainant didn’t want to have
to go to the trouble of doing all the work that Ben had done.
I hope this is clear.
Another issue that should be considered as well is this.
With many papers, we’re using Met Office observations. We’ve abstracted these
from BADC to use them in the papers. We’re not allowed to make these available
to others. We’d need to get the Met Office’s permission in all cases.
This email came overnight – from Tom Peterson, who works at NCDC in Asheville.

[1]http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/18/finally-an-honest-quantification-of-urban-warmi
ng-by-a-major-climate-scientist/
“Phil Jones, the director of the Hadley Climate Center in the UK.”

We all know that this is not my job. The paper being referred to appeared in JGR
last year. The paper is

Jones, P.D., Lister, D.H. and Li, Q., 2008: Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature
records, with an emphasis on China. J. Geophys. Res. 113, D16122,
doi:10.1029/2008/JD009916.
The paper clearly states where I work – CRU at UEA. There is no mention of the Hadley
Centre!
There is also no about face as stated on the web page.
Sending this as it gives a good example of the sort of people you are dealing
with when you might be considering changes to data policies at the RMS.
Several years ago I decided there was no point in responding to issues raised
on blog sites. Ben has made the same decision as well.
There are probably wider issues due to climate change becoming more main stream
in the more popular media that the RMS might like to consider. I just think you should
be aware of some of the background. CRU has had numerous FOI requests since the
beginning of 2007. The Met Office, Reading, NCDC and GISS have had as well – many
related to IPCC involvement. I know the world changes and the way we do things changes,
but these requests and the sorts of simple mistakes, should not have an influence
on the way things have been adequately dealt with for over a century.

Cheers
Phil

5180.txt

Renu,
The first of the summaries I sent you – for a paper which is online
in J. Climate – has been picked up by one of the skeptic web sites. It
seems that someone has gone through and tried to explain the paper, and
to say how we got many things wrong!

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/24/a-look-at-the-thompson-et-al-paper
-hi-tech-wiggle-matching-and-removal-of-natural-variables/

Just thought I’d let you know in case it gets picked up elsewhere.

Have a good weekend.
Phil

In Conclusion

It looks like The Team does follow WUWT and takes action when things are not looking good for them. One can only hope they learn a little bit along the way, but from what I’ve seen, they are not folks who doubt their absolute perfection…

It is also quite clearly running a propaganda operation. Call it “PR” if you like, but they are most clearly working to make the narrative fit their desired goals, and are quite clearly NOT just doing unbiased science work. So much of what they “work” at is control and shaping of the message, making sure the impact on the public is as desired. Darned near everything BUT unbiased truth seeking.

At times it looks like they are simply believing that they have God’s Own Truth and are just trying to problem solve anything that comes along into that “vision”. Again, not the correct mind set for science to be properly done. (More like some “C” students in lab classes where they just keep repeating the steps and making sure what they write in their lab book matches ‘the right answer’… At least when I had lab, we were taught that there were NO ERASURES – just add more annotations – and that whatever the reading was, that was what you wrote in the book and never changed – just add a second reading if needed.)

At other times it looks like the “Agenda Driven Manager” just making sure that the fires are peed on so his boss will be happy. Also not a proper science attitude. Politics first, message first, outcomes first? It’s just Sooo wrong. (Unless your goal is not science…)

At any rate, it is nice to see that WUWT has had impact. We even got to find out who TheFordPrefect is…

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