LONDON: Australian weather records for an international database on climate change were a "bloody mess", riddled with entry errors, duplication and inaccuracies, leaked British computer files reveal.

The Herald found the criticism in a 247-page specialist programmer's log, unearthed among the thousands of files hacked from East Anglia University, which is at the centre of a climate change email scandal.

Labelled "HARRY-READ-ME", the log catalogues problems with the raw, historical climate data sent from hundreds of meteorological stations around the world.

The Australian data comes in for particular criticism as the programmer discovers World Meteorological Organisation codes are missing, station names overlap and many co-ordinates are incorrect.

At one point the programmer writes about his attempts to make sense of the data. "What a bloody mess," he concludes. In another case, 30 years of data is attributed to a site at Cobar Airport but the frustrated programmer writes: "Now looking at the dates. something bad has happened ... COBAR AIRPORT AWS [automatic weather station] cannot start in 1962, it didn't open until 1993!"

In another he says: "Getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data ... so many false references ... so many changes ... bewildering."

The log spans four years of work at the university's Climatic Research Unit, the British keeper of global temperature records. The programmer rails that the information has "no uniform integrity".

His criticisms relate solely to the construction of the database and do not question the validity of historical temperature records or analyses that suggest the impact of human activity on global warming trends.

"I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations, one with no WMO and one with, usually overlapping and with the same

station name and very similar co-ordinates. I know it could be oldand new stations, but why such large overlaps if that's the case?Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight."

Michael Coughlan,the head of the National Climate Centre at the Australian Bureau ofMeteorology, said it was difficult to comment without knowing thesource of the raw data. It was unlikely to have come directly from thebureau's centre because unchecked, raw data was rarely requested forclimate analysis. The bureau had a network of more than 100 speciallyselected weather stations to monitor climate change, and a century ofrecords from them had been checked.

"We've put an enormouseffort into developing a high-quality reliable climate record forAustralia and all that data is freely available," Dr Coughlan said.

But he said that if the British programmer had been using raw weatherdata, which is sent around the world in real time for weatherforecasting, it would not be surprising that it contained errors. Thisraw data could have come from countries other than Australia, and wouldhave been difficult to correct without access to information inAustralia, such as the original field books.

"A computerprogrammer sitting in England won't have the resources to make thosecorrections. I can understand their frustrations," Dr Coughlan said.

The programmer's log is one of the most read files worldwide since theemail archives were leaked. The log has been treated particularlysympathetically as it reveals his blow-by-blow frustrations, whichseemed to be unfolding as his scientist colleagues, including the headof the Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones, appeared to discuss viaemail ways to avoid freedom-of-information requests for raw data and todenigrate their critics.

Professor Jones, who has denied aconspiracy to manipulate global warming statistics as "completerubbish", has stood down from his post while the universityinvestigates the leaks.

The Herald attempted to contactProfessor Jones and spoke to the computer programmer we believe to bethe author of the file. The programmer did not deny his name butreferred queries to the university's media unit. Professor Jones hasnot responded.

RealClimate, a website run by climatescientists, confirms the log as the work of a specialist charged withupgrading data.

"Anyone who has ever worked on constructing adatabase from dozens of individual, sometimes contradictory andinconsistently formatted datasets, will share his evident frustrationwith how tedious that can be," it says.

Original Source - http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-email-mess-hits-australia-20091204-kb39.html