re: #401 Walter L. Newton

What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?

1. The UK enjoys a reputation for strong and robust science on the international stage. In the field of climate research the Met Office is widely acknowledged as world leading.

2. Whilst it would be arrogant to assume that any system or process is perfect, the codes and processes in place to govern science research across the UK, laid down by the Government Office for Science, the UK Research Integrity Office and Research Councils UK, form a comprehensive framework within which science research is produced and debated. In addition, the Met Office also adheres fully to the Civil Service Code and operates to the highest standards of integrity and transparency.

3. All published science is subjected to a rigorous process of peer review: a well-established method by which scientific evidence and claims, and importantly the methodology behind these, are scrutinised by qualified experts in the field. Peer review also promotes and maintains open debate across the science community - crucial to further developments in science.

4. Transparency and integrity are vital components in maintaining the Met Office’s, and the UK’s, position at the leading edge in climate science and we have wherever possible, but dependant on IPR ownership, released the underlying land temperature component used in the HadCRUT analysis. The Met Office’s sea temperature component has been widely available for some time.

How independent are the other two international data sets?

5. There is strong evidence that the globe has warmed. Three independent global temperature data sets, HadCRUT, NCDC and NASA-GISS, all clearly demonstrate the rise in global temperatures over the last 150 years. Despite the large differences in the methods used to estimate global temperature trends, these blended analyses are consistent in their view of global temperature change.

6. There are numerous studies in the peer-reviewed literature that attest to the robustness of the surface temperature records, their independence and their non-reliance on specific individual station records. Support for the reality of surface trends also comes from reanalyses and changes in ocean heat content, glaciers, humidity and a host of other indicators including phenological data. Indicators from meteorological, oceanographic and physical measurements are strongly consistent with the surface temperature records discussed above.

7. The data come from numerous different technologies and have been investigated by numerous independent groups. Where multiple datasets exist for a given parameter none fundamentally disagrees with the expected signal for a warming world. For the surface records to be wrong would require all these other analyses to be similarly wrong.

8. Annex A provides a detailed explanation of the differences between the analyses with respect to data sourcing and methodology.