---
title: "Climatic Research Unit documents"
chunk: 7/8
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"
---

My personal opinion is that both FOI requests [for data related to a 2008 paper and for correspondence dating back to 2006] are intrusive and unreasonable. Steven McIntyre provides absolutely no scientific justification or explanation for such requests. ... McIntyre has no interest in improving our scientific understanding of the nature and causes of climate change. He has no interest in rational scientific discourse. ... We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an "audit" by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues.
In an Associated Press interview, McIntyre disagreed with his portrayal in emails, and said "Everything that I've done in this, I've done in good faith."
FactCheck stated that the great majority of CRU's data is already freely available, and the scientists were reluctant to supply their own correspondence, code and data to people whose motives seemed questionable to them. It is not clear that any deliberate obstruction happened, and emails show the scientists discussing with university officials and lawyers their obligations under the new legislation, informing critics that data is already freely available, or that the information has been sent to them. This question is to form part of the East Anglia investigation.
The University of East Anglia stated that the great majority of CRU climate data was already freely available, but the remainder was mainly owned by national meteorological services around the globe and subject to non-publication agreements. The Met Office was requesting new agreements to allow it to republish the raw data. CRU has a web page describing the progress that had previously been made in releasing this data, and giving details of non-publication agreements including the restrictions placed by the Met office on use of its data for bona fide research programmes. In a later BBC interview, Phil Jones said that the land station records developed at CRU show close agreement with the independent NCDC and GISS official records, which are based on raw data freely available from the Global Historical Climatology Network.
In response to the Met Office requests, some national meteorological services gave full or conditional agreement, others failed to respond, and the request was explicitly refused by Trinidad and Tobago and Poland. In discussions with the ICO about FOIA requests which had been made before the email controversy had begun, the university argued that the data was publicly available from the Met organisations, and the lack of agreement exempted the remaining data. In its decision released on 23 June 2011, the ICO stated that the data was not easily available and there was insufficient evidence that disclosure would have an adverse effect on international relations. The ICO required the university to release the data covered by the FOIA request within 35 calendar days. On 27 July 2011 CRU announced release of the raw instrumental data not already in the public domain, with the exception of Poland which was outside the area covered by the FOIA request. The data are available for download from Met Office website and from CRU. The university remained concerned "that the forced release of material from a source which has explicitly refused to give permission for release could have some damaging consequences for the UK in international research collaborations."

==== Gaps in understanding temperature variations ====
Critics also highlighted a passage in an e-mail sent by Kevin Trenberth on 12 October 2009 that discussed gaps in scientific understanding of recent temperature variations, in which Trenberth wrote:

The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't,
Trenberth told the Associated Press that the email referred to an article he authored calling for improvement in measuring global warming to describe unusual data, such as rising sea surface temperatures. The word travesty refers to what Trenberth sees as an inadequate observing system that, were it more adequate, would be able to track the warming he believes is there.
In a statement on his NCAR webpage Trenberth states that,

It is amazing to see this particular quote lambasted so often. It stems from a paper I published this year bemoaning our inability to effectively monitor the energy flows associated with short-term climate variability. It is quite clear from the paper that I was not questioning the link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and warming, or even suggesting that recent temperatures are unusual in the context of short-term natural variability.