Penn State University is home to the largest meteorology program in the nation. It's something they are proud of. They are also home to Professor Michael Mann, who was exposed for 'tricking data' in CRU documents recently released in what is now known as Climategate. Mann is responsible for developing the famous hockey stick diagram of historical global temperatures used in Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. This was designed to highlight abrupt warming in the past century that looks like a hockey stick on a timeline. We now know that to not be true... The trick, unfortunately made some aspects of past climate hide extremes to exaggerate any warming in recent years. Here is the e-mail that was sent from Phil Jones at CRU to the authors of the hockey stick. In it, credit is given to Mike for his 'trick' to manipulate data:
From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK
Penn State has been overwhelmed with the response from the scientific community. It was left with no other option but investigate. The official Penn State statement:
University Reviewing Recent Reports on Climate Information
Professor Michael Mann is a highly regarded member of the Penn State faculty conducting research on climate change. Professor Mann’s research papers have been published in well respected peer-reviewed scientific journals. In November 2005, Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) requested that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) convene a panel of independent experts to investigate Professor Mann’s seminal 1999 reconstruction of the global surface temperature over the past 1,000 years. The resulting 2006 report of the NAS panel (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676) concluded that Mann’s results were sound and has been subsequently supported by an array of evidence that includes additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions.
In recent days a lengthy file of emails has been made public. Some of the questions raised through those emails may have been addressed already by the NAS investigation but others may not have been considered. The University is looking into this matter further, following a well defined policy used in such cases. No public discussion of the matter will occur while the University is reviewing the concerns that have been raised.
My question: What does this say for the integrity of their entire department? It is hard to imagine that Mann was the only person involved in manipulating the data at Penn State. What other faculty, and perhaps even grad students were part of the scheme?
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