Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009: Met Office data to debunk sceptics

[Loki]

Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009: Met Office data to debunk sceptics (http://www.metro.co.uk/news/805364-met-office-releases-data-to-debunk-climate-sceptics)

In a bid to counter claims that global warming data was manipulated by scientists, the Met Office has released weather records from 1,500 monitoring stations.

http://img.metro.co.uk/i/pix/2009/12/08/article-1260274482190-07819D29000005DC-295558_636x440.jpg

The raw data comes from a network of individual stations which have been used by the World Meteorological Organisation to monitor global surface temperatures.

According to the Met Office, the records from the 1,500 sites show that temperatures have risen over the past 150 years.

The results from the monitoring centres released today is very similar to the complete set of data records from around 5,000 stations which the Met Office's Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) use to measure global land temperatures in the "HadCrut" record.

The data released today, a subset of the total from the 5,000 sites, is not a new global temperature record and does not replace the HadCrut record or other analyses from Nasa or the National Climatic Data Centre in the US.
The Met Office said it would release the data from the remaining station records when it had permission from those centres to do so.

And scientists said they would publish "as soon as possible" the specific computer code that aggregates the individual station temperatures into the global record.

The publication of the data comes in the wake of leaking of stolen emails taken from servers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and posted on websites run by sceptics, possibly in a bid to undermine the global climate summit in Copenhagen.

The emails, which include a reference to a "trick" to "hide the decline", have been seized on by sceptics as evidence of scientists manipulating or suppressing data to back up a theory of man-made global warming.

Suggestions of a conspiracy to strengthen the evidence for man-made climate change have been dismissed by scientists and politicians as "nonsense" in the face of a broad scientific consensus that the world is warming largely as a result of human actions.

At the opening of the crunch UN climate talks in Copenhagen - where negotiators are aiming to agree a new deal on global warming - the head of the UN expert panel of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said sceptics were trying to discredit the research.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri said: "The recent incident of stealing the emails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts, perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC."

The scientists at the centre of the row have said they stand by their research, while an independent review has been launched by the university.

The Commons Science and Technology Committee has asked for a letter from the University of East Anglia explaining the incident and what steps had been taken to restore confidence in the research unit.

[Sol Invictus]

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/World_s_hottest_decade_adds_to_pres_12082009.html

Article Published on December 8 2009

The UN's top weather expert warned Tuesday that the world is in its hottest decade on record as climate negotiators plunged into talks seeking a historic deal on cutting carbon emissions.

The prediction by the World Meteorological Organisation underlined the pressure for an agreement at a summit in Copenhagen, which was boosted when the United States said it would start to regulate carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant.

"The decade 2000-2009 is very likely to be the warmest on record, warmer than the 1990s, which were in turn warmer than the 1980s," World Meteorological Organisation Secretary General Michel Jarraud told a press conference.

Jarraud also said that the year 2009 would probably rank as the fifth warmest since accurate records were started in 1850.

Britain's Met Office released data from hundreds of monitoring stations worldwide showing that the global surface temperature has risen significantly over the last 150 years, including a finding that the rise has averaged more than 0.15 degrees celsius per decade since the middle of the 1970s.

The Copenhagen talks, under the banner of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), are the boldest attempt in a 17-year odyssey to turn back the threat of climate change through consensus. Related article: Europe's 'greenest city'.

If all goes well, the conference will yield an outline agreement that sets down pledges by major emitters of greenhouse gases to curb pollution.

It will also set down the principles of long-term financing, possibly worth hundreds of billions of dollars, to help wean poor countries off high-carbon technology and beef up their defences against climate change.

Further negotiations would be needed over the next year to flesh out the agreement. Once ratified, the accord would take effect from 2013.

Delegates said the next few days would see countries lay out their positions before some 110 world leaders -- including US President Barack Obama, Premier Wen Jiabao of China and India's Manmohan Singh -- arrive for the climax.

Towards the end of the week, former Danish climate minister Connie Hedegaard, the conference chair, will carry out a review of positions and then put together a draft agreement.

Rich countries are under pressure to kick in 10 billion dollars a year in funding from 2010 to 2012.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would urge European countries to commit to deeper cuts in emissions.

"We've got to make countries recognise that they have to be as ambitious as they say they want to be," Brown told The Guardian.

"It's not enough to say 'I may do this, I might do this, possibly I'll do this'. I want to create a situation in which the European Union is persuaded to go to 30 percent."

However German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on emerging giants China and India to contribute more.

"The aim of this conference must be an international commitment to limit global warming to 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050," Merkel said on ZDF public television.

"Everybody has to do more, but in particular countries like China and India, which do not even recognise this two-degree target."

Two years of talks have taken place in the run-up to Copenhagen, exposing deep rifts on emissions burden-sharing.

Reducing greenhouse gases carries an economic cost in energy efficiency and in shifting away from the oil, gas and coal, the cheap and plentiful "fossil fuels" that are the mainstay of the world's power.

Developing countries, several of which are already big polluters, are refusing to budge unless rich nations slash their emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 over 1990.

Among advanced economies, eyes have turned to the United States, which remained on the sidelines of the climate arena under George W. Bush.

Obama is now bulldozing away Bush's policies and is steering legislation through Congress that would cut US emissions by four percent by 2020 compared to the 1990 benchmark -- albeit still a fraction of what the EU is demanding.

His hand at Copenhagen was strengthened when the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) labelled six greenhouse gases a dangerous pollutant that would be subject to government regulation, sidestepping Congress.