Oxford academic wins right to read UEA climate data | Environment | guardian.co.uk - 0 views
www.guardian.co.uk/...climate-data-uea
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Jonathan Jones, physics professor at Oxford University and self-confessed "climate change agnostic", used freedom of information law to demand the data that is the life's work of the head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones. UEA resisted the requests to disclose the data, but this week it was compelled to do so.
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Graham gave the UEA one month to deliver the data, which includes more than 4m individual thermometer readings taken from 4,000 weather stations over the past 160 years. The commissioner's office said this was his first ruling on demands for climate data made in the wake of the climategate affair.
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Critics of the UEA's scientists say an independent analysis of the temperature data may reveal that Phil Jones and his colleagues have misinterpreted the evidence of global warming. They may have failed to allow for local temperature influences, such as the growth of cities close to many of the thermometers.
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when Jonathan Jones and others asked for the data in the summer of 2009, the UEA said legal exemptions applied. It said variously that the temperature data were the property of foreign meteorological offices; were intellectual property that might be valuable if sold to other researchers; and were in any case often publicly available.
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Jonathan Jones said this week that he took up the cause of data freedom after Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mathematician, had requests for the data turned down. He thought this was an unreasonable response when Phil Jones had already shared the data with academic collaborators, including Prof Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US. He asked to be given the data already sent to Webster, and was also turned down.
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An Oxford academic has won the right to read previously secret data on climate change held by the University of East Anglia (UEA). The decision, by the government's information commissioner, Christopher Graham, is being hailed as a landmark ruling that will mean that thousands of British researchers are required to share their data with the public.