Update on the British Met Office[1]

The Met Office now promises to release temperature data from 1000 stations:

“This data is a subset of the full HadCRUT record of global temperatures, which is one of the global temperature records that have underpinned IPCC assessment reports and numerous scientific studies. The data subset will consist of a network of individual stations that has been designated by the World Meteorological Organisation for use in climate monitoring. The subset of stations is evenly distributed across the globe and provides a fair representation of changes in mean temperature on a global scale over land.”

“This subset is not a new global temperature record and it does not replace the HadCRUT, NASA GISS and NCDC global temperature records, all of which have been fully peer reviewed. We are confident this subset will show that global average land temperatures have risen over the last 150 years.

“This subset release will continue the policy of putting as much of the station temperature record as possible into the public domain.

“We intend that as soon as possible we will also publish the specific computer code that aggregates the individual station temperatures into the global land temperature record.

“As soon as we have all permissions in place we will release the remaining station records - around 5000 in total - that make up the full land temperature record. We are dependant on international approvals to enable this final step and cannot guarantee that we will get permission from all data owners.

“UEA fully supports the Met Office in making this data publicly available and is continuing to work with the Met Office to seek the necessary permission from national data owners to publish, as soon as possible as much of the data that we can gain permission for. “

The “peer reviewed” part almost sounds like a joke, but it might just indicate that the Met Office hasn’t internalized the issues surrounding CRUgate.

We will see what kind of release this produces, and whether the data is credible to start with, even before any analysis of it is started.

On another topic: UEA (University of East Anglia) professor Andrew Watson called AGW skeptic Marc Morano an "asshole" on a televised BBC interview. Still haven't learned to coexist with critics and dissenters have they? Andrew Watson is part of CRU and recently defended Phil Jones.

[note 1]From their website, the Met Office is: "The UK’s National Weather Service. A Trading Fund within the Ministry of Defence, operating on a commercial basis under set targets." Clear as mud, I'd say. Is it a government entity, or not?