ICO Orders UEA to Produce CRUTEM Station Data

[marchesarosa]

ICO Orders UEA to Produce CRUTEM Station Data


Steve McIntyre reports on Climate Audit:

Breaking news:

Today probably marks the closing chapter of the longstanding FOI request for CRUTEM station data. The UK Information Commissioner (ICO) has rendered a decision (see here) on Jonathon Jones’ appeal of the UEA’s refusal to provide Prof Jones with the CRUTEM station data that they had previously provided to Georgia Tech. The decision that can only be characterized as a total thrashing of the University of East Anglia.


Professor Jonathan Jones of Oxford University (like me, an alumnus of Corpus Christi, Oxford), is a Bishop Hill and CA reader and was one of several CA readers who requested the CRUTEM version sent to Georgia Tech earlier that year. (Contrary to disinformation from Nature, relatively few readers requested CRUTEM data; most FOI requests at the time were for the supposed confidentiality agreements prohibiting data being sent to “non-academics” – agreements that the University was unable to produce.

Jones’ request for CRUTEM data, like mine, was refused by UEA. Like me, Jones appealed the refusal at UEA (the first stage). On Oct 23, 2009, UEA rejected his appeal. (My appeal was rejected about 3 weeks later on the very eve of Climategate.) While I didn’t pursue the appeal to the ICO, Prof Jones did appeal and the present decision is the result of this appeal. I was unaware that this appeal was pending and the decision came as a surprise to me. Since the story started at CA, Andrew Montford and Prof Jones decided that news of the decision should also be broken here. I anticipate that Bishop Hill will also cover the story.

I urge readers to read the thoughtful decision. My own comments will be restricted to some legal aspects of the decision that intrigued me...

more
climateaudit.org/2011/06/27/ico-orders-uea-to-produce-crutem-station-data/

also covered here
wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/27/breaking-ico-orders-uea-to-produce-crutem-station-data/#more-42363

and here
bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/6/28/climate-cuttings-56.html

[marchesarosa]

Here is the Information Commissioner's ruling

www.climateaudit.info/pdf/foi/cru/ICO_2011_jones_crutem.pdf

After all the attempted whitwashes of CRU by supposedly independent inquiries it is heartening to find that there is still one Office in the land upholding proper standards of behaviour.

What was Tony Blair's deepest regret? Enacting the Freedom of Information Act.

Yo Tony!

[marchesarosa]

Oxford academic wins right to read UEA climate data
Decision by information commissioner hailed as landmark ruling in favour of public access to scientific research

Fred Pearce in the Guardian expresses this view.
Friday 1 July 2011


The university has resisted requests to disclose the data, which includes more than 4m individual thermometer readings taken from 4,000 weather stations over the past 160 years.


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.

The ruling also marks a victory for critics of the UEA and its Climatic Research Unit in the "climategate" affair. It comes at the end of a two-year rearguard action by UEA climate scientists to prevent publication of their "crown jewels", an archive of world temperature records collected jointly with the Met Office.

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.

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.

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.

But Jonathan Jones, who is not a climate scientist, said he thought "the most significant features of this decision are the precedents that have been set". The commissioner is likely to rule more generally in favour of public access to scientific data.

Under the 2000 Freedom of Information Act, public bodies such as universities have to share their data unless there are good reasons not to. But 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.

But in a damning verdict, Graham said suggestions that international relations could be upset by disclosure were "highly speculative", and "it is not clear how UEA might have planned to commercially exploit the information requested."

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. So he appealed to the information commissioner.

"I am extremely concerned about the apparent pattern of secrecy and evasion," he said. "My sole aim [in pursuing the case] is to help restore climate science to something more closely resembling scientific norms."

The UEA said: "We have nothing to fear from scrutiny; we are committed to openness and transparency in our research... and we fully intend to make all data publicly available as soon as possible."

[principled]

Marchesa
Regardless of one's views on on how the UEA climatology dept. used the temperature data, the university's actions and excuses at the time had all the hallmarks of being made up on the hoof in a frenzied effort to deny access. I'm glad, therefore that the Commissioner has come down in favour of releasing the data set.

I think the university will look back on the whole issue as one that produced much more heat than light...unless, of course, analysis of the complete set shows that something was amiss with the conclusions they drew from them.

P

[StuartG]

Some digging around...



----
"ICO orders release of (mostly useless) weather station data"
www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/28/ico_climategate_release_this_rubbish/
in which is mentioned Harry's Text, Most browsers have control F [^F] to find, try first 3 letters of a well known 4 letter word and try Aust=Australia You'll soon see.
www.anenglishmanscastle.com/HARRY_READ_ME.txt
----
To give an indication of the sites, try this WMO site reference for Region VI, Europe. Unfortunately the WMO site defies navigation so a better area map than the one above could not be found.
www.wmo-dra.info/gmap/europe.html
"Regional Association VI (Europe)"
and clik on 'Climattemp'
and then move down to RBSN Network
and clik on 'Surface'
and just to complete the picture, clik on 'Show Region VI' at the bottom.
Here's the 'mother' page for the one above
www.wmo.int/pages/prog/dra/eur.php
----
to download a representative set of records, use this link for 2010 [it's a .zip file]
www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/zip/4/g/All_Jan_2010.zip
You'll see an explanation at the bottom of the page of the format of the 'flatfile' obtained in the .zip. The main page of explanation is here...
www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/climate-monitoring/land-and-atmosphere/surface-station-records
----
To find the amount of stations that are WMO registered it was necessary to go to the 'Klingenfuss Radio Data Code Manual' [that I just happen to have about my person], in it is a list of stations. The stations have unique identification numbers, of which the first two digits of the five figure code designate the area within the seven regions. So that...
01001 is Norway and station Jan Mayen, 03895 is UK, Jersey Airport, 94100 is Australia, Kalumburu. there are just over five pages for Australia, some 975 stations. This is to be expected as it's the area of two and a bit Europes.
There are approximately 13,065 stations world wide. and as my book says...
"This unique list is indispensible for the identification of really exotic HF radio stations. It is much more complete and correct than the original WMO list that has many writing errors and omissions."
----
Background...
"Inquiry Disinformation about CRUTEM"
climateaudit.org/2010/07/21/inquiry-disinformation-about-crutem/

Professor Jonathan Jones
www.bnc.ox.ac.uk/323/about-brasenose-31/academic-staff-150/professor-jonathan-jones-457.html
StuartG