The climate data wars have taken a new turn. A leading British university has been told it must release data on tree rings dating back more than 7000 years to an amateur climate analyst and climate sceptic.

The ruling, which could have important repercussions for environmental research in the UK, comes from the government’s deputy information commissioner Graham Smith. In January he caused consternation at the height of the “climategate” affair by criticising the way that the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, handled sceptics’ requests for data from its Climatic Research Unit.

Now, following a three-year dispute between banker and climate sceptic Doug Keenan and Queens University Belfast, Smith has told the university to hand over to Keenan the results of its 40-year investigation of Irish oak-tree growth rings.

The ruling sends a strong signal that scientists at public institutions such as universities cannot claim their data is their or their university’s private property.


Intellectual property

The researcher whose work is now public property, palaeoecologist Mike Baillie, says: “Sets of measurements made using personal expertise and involving specialised decision-making are no longer regarded as intellectual property. In future any scientist researching on any topic which can be regarded in any way as ‘environmental’ must live under the threat that they can be made to hand over their measurements.”

Keenan says he believes the Irish data could bolster the sceptics’ case that a thousand years ago there was a widespread medieval warm period on Earth not unlike current warming. But last year Baillie and his colleague Ana Garcia-Suárez published a study showing that Irish oak growth rings are a good proxy for summer rainfall, but not for temperature.

Keenan is one of a number of climate sceptics who have submitted freedom-of-information requests to the beleaguered Climatic Research Unit over the past few years. According to the British newspaper Financial Times, all those who submitted such requests are now being interviewed by police as part of a police investigation into who acquired and published a file of the unit’s emails last November, sparking the climategate controversy.

The Financial Times reports that one of its readers, businessman and climate sceptic Sebastian Nokes, has been interviewed by police, who asked about his political and scientific opinions.

Journal reference: Dendrochronologia, vol 27, p 183