Climatic Research Unit documents

Climatic Research Unit documents including thousands of e-mails and other computer files were stolen from a server at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in a hacking incident in November 2009. The documents were redistributed first through several blogs of global warming skeptics, and allegations were made that they indicated misconduct by leading climate scientists. A series of investigations rejected these allegations, while concluding that CRU scientists should have been more open with distributing data and methods on request. Precisely six committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged by the end of the investigations.

The incident occurred shortly before the opening December 2009 Copenhagen global climate summit. It has prompted general discussion about increasing the openness of scientific data (though the majority of climate data have always been freely available). Scientists, scientific organisations, and government officials have stated that the incident does not affect the overall scientific case for climate change. Andrew Revkin reported in the New York Times that "The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument."

The material comprised more than 1,000 e-mails, 2,000 documents, as well as commented source code, pertaining to climate change research covering a period from 1996 until 2009. Some of the e-mails which have been widely publicised included discussions of how to combat the arguments of climate change sceptics, unflattering comments about sceptics, queries from journalists, and drafts of scientific papers. There have been assertions that these discussions indicated efforts to shut out dissenters and their points of view, and included discussions about destroying files in order to prevent them from being revealed under the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000. A review by the Associated Press of all the e-mails found that they did not support claims of faking of science, but did show disdain for sceptical critics. Scientists had discussed avoiding sharing information with critics, but the documents showed no evidence that any data was destroyed. Researchers also discussed in e-mails how information they had released on request was used by critics to make personal attacks on researchers. In an interview with The Guardian, Phil Jones said "Some of the emails probably had poorly chosen words and were sent in the heat of the moment, when I was frustrated. I do regret sending some of them. We've not deleted any emails or data here at CRU." He confirmed that the e-mails that had sparked the most controversy appeared to be genuine.

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