Email 4766, Phil Jones to the Met Office, May 2009: "We would look stupid if you released the data now"

Email 4766

Dear All, There are several issues you should be aware of:

1. UEA has denied access to the data to McIntyre (and at least two others in the past) - in 2007. One of the three appealed and that appeal was rejected. We would look stupid if you released the data now. I can put your FOI person in touch with the one at UEA. I think they already know each other!

We put up this page at the time

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/landstations/

So they have a list of which stations are used.

2. I have signed agreements with some Met Services (European ones) in the 1990s that I would not pass on their data to third parties. The data could be used in the gridding though and gridded products made available. I never kept a list of which stations these were though, as I never thought such problems would arise.

3. Work on the land station data has been funded by the US Dept of Energy, and I have their agreement that the data needn't be passed on. I got this in 2007.

4. You web site says that anyone requesting the data should apply to me, so tell him that's what they should do. I think you should remove this sentence, by the way. It is this that has opened up the issue again.

5. The data aren't yours to release! Maybe there is no formal IPR agreement, but there is an implicit one.

6. We've altered the version that you have anyway. We're also in the process of doing more of this.

7. You'd need to waste your time combining the two parts of the data and removing the stations that don't get used.

Cheers Phil