---
title: "Climatic Research Unit documents"
chunk: 8/8
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"
---

=== Code and documentation ===
The CRU files also included programs written in Fortran, programmer comments and a readme file, which attracted considerable attention from programmers. The log covered more than four years work by a programmer, who had been frustrated by problems in relating climate data from numerous international sources. In a BBC Newsnight report, software engineer John Graham-Cumming said the code was "below the standard you'd expect in any commercial software" because it lacked clear documentation or an audit history. Graham-Cumming also reported finding a bug in the code's error handling which, if it occurred, would ignore data without warning.
Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford, said that the code investigated by Newsnight had nothing at all to do with the HadCRUT temperature record used for climate reconstructions, which is maintained at the Met Office and not at CRU. When he challenged Newsnight on this, they responded that "Our expert's opinion is that this is climate change code" and declined to retract the story. He commented that on the same basis "the quality of the code I use to put together problems for our physics undergraduates shows that we should not trust results from my colleagues who work on the Large Hadron Collider on the grounds that 'it is all physics code'."
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) investigation established that the programming notes recorded the process of updating the CRU TS2.1 dataset product to TS3.0. This product includes multiple climate variables, including temperatures, rainfall and cloud cover, and has nothing to do with the HadCRUT temperature record which uses the separate CRUTEM land temperature dataset. The CRU programmer had the difficult task of merging datasets at the same time as migrating code to a new computer system, finding ways of dealing with inconsistencies in data from disparate organisations, improving quality control and debugging.

== References ==

"Hackers target leading climate research unit". BBC News. 20 November 2009. The e-mail system of one of the world's leading climate research units has been breached by hackers.
"The CRU hack". RealClimate. 20 November 2009. Retrieved 24 November 2009.
"Hans von Storch". Coast.gkss.de. Archived from the original on 19 July 2011. Retrieved 28 November 2009.
US EPA (29 July 2010). Denial of Petitions for Reconsideration of the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. US Environmental Protection Agency. Archived from the original on 21 September 2015. Retrieved 17 September 2015.

== External links ==
Unwinding "Hide the Decline" Unwinding "Hide the Decline", detailed video coverage on Climategate, 28 April 2011.