Continued analysis of emails and reports leaked from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in eastern England, which have been confirmed as real by CRU, show not only an effort to manipulate climate data, but that their computer database is in disarray. Both the IPCC and the EPA have relied heavily on these databases to form their policy decisions.

At the very least, Congress should thoroughly investigate the state of the science before passing any Cap & Trade system and before the EPA promulgates rules about carbon dioxide “pollution.”

The following is from a CBS News report including their embedded links.

The leaked documents (see our previous coverage) come from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in eastern England. In global warming circles, the CRU wields outsize influence: it claims the world’s largest temperature data set, and its work and mathematical models were incorporated into the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report. That report, in turn, is what the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged it “relies on most heavily” when concluding that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and should be regulated.

Last week’s leaked e-mails range from innocuous to embarrassing and, critics believe, scandalous. They show that some of the field’s most prominent scientists were so wedded to theories of man-made global warming that they ridiculed dissenters who asked for copies of their data (“have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots”), cheered the deaths of skeptical journalists, and plotted how to keep researchers who reached different conclusions from publishing in peer-reviewed journals.

One e-mail message, apparently from CRU director Phil Jones, references the U.K.’s Freedom of Information Act when asking another researcher to delete correspondence that might be disclosed in response to public records law: “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise.” Another, also apparently from Jones: global warming skeptics “have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” (Jones was a contributing author to the chapter of the U.N.’s IPCC report titled “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes.”)

In addition to e-mail messages, the roughly 3,600 leaked documents posted on sites including Wikileaks.org and EastAngliaEmails.com include computer code and a description of how an unfortunate programmer named “Harry” — possibly the CRU’s Ian “Harry” Harris — was tasked with resuscitating and updating a key temperature database that proved to be problematic. Some excerpts from what appear to be his notes, emphasis added”

I am seriously worried that our flagship gridded data product is produced by Delaunay triangulation – apparently linear as well. As far as I can see, this renders the station counts totally meaningless. It also means that we cannot say exactly how the gridded data is arrived at from a statistical perspective – since we’re using an off-the-shelf product that isn’t documented sufficiently to say that. Why this wasn’t coded up in Fortran I don’t know – time pressures perhaps? Was too much effort expended on homogenisation, that there wasn’t enough time to write a gridding procedure? Of course, it’s too late for me to fix it too. Meh.

I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations, one with no WMO and one with, usually overlapping and with the same station name and very similar coordinates. I know it could be old and new stations, but why such large overlaps if that’s the case? Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight… So, we can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!

One thing that’s unsettling is that many of the assigned WMo codes for Canadian stations do not return any hits with a web search. Usually the country’s met office, or at least the Weather Underground, show up – but for these stations, nothing at all. Makes me wonder if these are long-discontinued, or were even invented somewhere other than Canada!

In the past few days a major scandal in climate science has developed. Someone hacked in to the files of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) based at the University of East Anglia, in England (aka Hadley CRU). The CRU has been a major proponent of anthropogenic global warming and a principal in report preparation for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

More than 1,000 internal emails and several reports from CRU have been posted on the internet and the blogosphere has gone wild with the implications of the revealed messages. Dr. Phil Jones, head of CRU, confirmed that his organization has been hacked and that the emails are accurate.

The emails reveal a concerted effort on the part of a small group of scientists to manipulate data, suppress dissent, and foil the dissemination of the information by “losing” data and skirting Britain’s Freedom of Information Act. The emails reveal that the contention that there is dangerous human-induced global warming, is not supported by the data, that those supporting that contention knew it, and sought to control the discussion so as to hide the unreliable nature of what they were claiming.

This revelation should be noted by policy makers since it undermines the justification for control of carbon dioxide emissions.

Comment by Dr. Roy Spencer on the incident:

While it is too early to tell just yet, there seems to be considerable … evidence that data have been hidden or destroyed to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) data requests; data have been manipulated in order to get results that best suit the pro-anthropogenic global warming agenda of the IPCC; e-mails that contain incriminating discussions are being deleted. And, on the bright side, we skeptics seem to be quite a thorn in the side of the IPCC.

In reading these e-mails from the ‘other side’ of the scientific debate I am particularly amazed at the mind set of a few of these scientists. I exchange e-mails with other like-minded (read ‘skeptical’) scientists, as do the IPCC scientists with their peers. But never do I hear of anyone manipulating climate data to achieve a certain end. I must say that I am pleased to see that NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth admits that it is a “travesty” that no one can explain the lack of global warming in recent years. See: http://tinyurl.com/ylz7ss5 See a follow-up blog: http://tinyurl.com/yzdh8zy

You can read some of the news stories here:

London Telegraph: http://tinyurl.com/yhx9juw

Guardian (UK): http://tinyurl.com/yf5c2er

Canada Free Press: http://tinyurl.com/yljzn9h This one names a prominent University of Arizona professor as being involved.

Herald Sun, Australia: http://tinyurl.com/ybka6az

Examiner.com Phoenix: http://tinyurl.com/yd372g2

This article shows several of the emails including one from Phil Jones that says in part how he hid the decline in proxy temperature data and appended other data to produce the infamous “hockey stick” graph.

Here is access to a searchable database of the emails:

http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/index.php

Note to readers of RealClimate.org: Many RealClimate bloggers are principals in the scandal.

This is story is still unfolding. The next few weeks should be interesting.