---
title: "Climatic Research Unit documents"
chunk: 5/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:39.055334+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

==== Peer review issue ====

In response to an e-mail mentioning a recent paper in the scientific journal Climate Research that questioned assertions that the 20th century was abnormally warm, Mann wrote in an e-mail of 11 March 2003:

I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.
Mann told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that he did not feel there was anything wrong in saying "we shouldn't be publishing in a journal that's activist."
Mann was not alone in expressing concern about the peer review process of the journal. Half of the journal's editorial board, including editor-in-chief Hans von Storch, resigned in the wake of controversy surrounding the article's publication. The publisher later admitted that the paper's major findings could not "be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided in the paper. [Climate Research] should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication."
In an 18 December 2009 column in the WSJ, Pat Michaels alleged that pressure from Jones and Mann was responsible for the resignations at Climate Research. In a response also published in the WSJ, von Storch said that he left the post as chief editor of Climate Research "with no outside pressure, because of insufficient quality control on a bad paper – a skeptic's paper, at that." Michaels said the incident demonstrated how peer-reviewed literature had been biased to prevent himself and others of like mind from publishing. In a response published by the WSJ, Mann said the only bias was for "well-reasoned writing that is buttressed by facts" and climate change deniers such as Richard Lindzen and John Christy had no problems with publishing their work in mainstream journals. He pointed to presidential science adviser John Holdren's 2003 statement that Michaels had "published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science."
The independent review commissioned by the University of East Anglia found that the strong reaction of the scientists to the Soon and Baliunas paper "was understandable, and did not amount to undue pressure on Climate Research."
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was petitioned about this issue by the Coalition for Responsible Regulation, the Ohio Coal Association, Peabody Energy, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, and the State of Texas The EPA concluded that the emails expressed displeasure but did not show that any action was in fact taken, and it is "expected and appropriate that researchers choose in which journals to publish, as well as recommend to their peers journals in which to publish or not publish. In this case, the bottom line is that the underlying science at issue has been shown to be flawed. The scientists' actions were focused on this lack of scientific merit and the process that lead to it, and not an attempt to distort the science or the scientific literature." The EPA considered that "If anything, their actions aimed to police the peer review process and rectify a problem that threatened its scientific integrity."

==== Alleged exclusion of papers from IPCC report ====
In July 2004, referring to Climate Research having published a paper by "MM", thought to be Ross McKitrick and Pat Michaels, and another paper by Eugenia Kalnay and Ming Cai, Jones emailed his colleagues saying, "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"  At that time, Jones and Kevin E. Trenberth were lead authors on a chapter in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. Trenberth told the investigating journalist "I had no role in this whatsoever. I did not make and was not complicit in that statement of Phil's. I am a veteran of three other IPCC assessments. I am well aware that we do not keep any papers out, and none were kept out. We assessed everything [though] we cannot possibly refer to all literature ... Both of the papers referred to were in fact cited and discussed in the IPCC." He also made a statement agreed with Jones, that "AR4 was the first time Jones was on the writing team of an IPCC assessment. The comment was naive and sent before he understood the process." Jones could have been expected to be aware of the rules as he had been a contributing author for more than ten years, but this was his first time as a lead author with a responsibility for content of the complete chapter.
The IPCC has stated that its procedures mean there is "no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed." Its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, stated that the papers that had been criticised "were actually discussed in detail in chapter six of the Working Group I report of the AR4 (IPCC Fourth Assessment Report). Furthermore, articles from the journal Climate Research, which was also decried in the emails, have been cited 47 times in the Working Group I report."
A Nature editorial stated that the UEA scientists had been sharply critical of the quality of the two papers, but "neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers." Peter Kelemen, a professor of geochemistry at Columbia University's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said that "If scientists attempted to exclude critics' peer-reviewed papers from IPCC reports, this was unethical in my view." Rajendra Pachauri responded that the IPCC has "a very transparent, a very comprehensive process which ensures that even if someone wants to leave out a piece of peer reviewed literature there is virtually no possibility of that happening."

==== Freedom of information ====