Climategate

Abstract

 In mid-November, 2009, a breach of the server of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, UK, occurred, and more than 1,000 e-mails were copied and disseminated over the Internet. CRU is one of the leading climatology institutes, and has constructed a long-term world temperature database that was referenced in the assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as evidence of global warming. The words “trick” and “hide the decline” in an e-mail, which mentioned the process for preparing the temperature time series, generated the allegation; those words demonstrated that scientists at CRU intended to falsify data to exaggerate warming. However, it can be regarded that the allegation was a manufactured controversy originating from irrelevant interpretations of personal e-mails at CRU. Scientists are now being requested to ensure that scientific knowledge and understanding are convincing not only to scientists but also to the general public.