In 2010 the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) with the assistance of four months help from the Australian BoM revised their seven station NZ temperature series to arrive at a national temperature trend from 1910. This is a much shorter period than the previous seven station series which was from before 1860.

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) started with an Official Information Act request on 21 December 2009 – attempting to obtain from NIWA details of the adjustments and construction of the seven station series from the many component data. These efforts did not succeed and I think in August 2010 they started court action against NIWA – which I understand is not over.

At the end of August 2010 NIWA sought the assistance of the Australian BoM to check their seven station series and in late December 2010 the revised NIWA seven station trend was published.

The NZ blog Climate Conversation Group has an article on 28th April “NIWA — show us the peer review!” – where they discuss the unsatisfactory state of affairs due to NIWA secretly adjusting raw station data to make their high warming seven station trend a trend that is unverifiable until NIWA releases details.

In February 2011 I lodged an FOI request with the BoM to release to me all documents and data connected with their work on the seven station series for NIWA. After a couple of extensions of time – on 6th May they emailed me the following pdf files which in a nutshell – tell me that all relevant documents and data are “fully exempt” from the FOI Act – and are thus still secret.

First the BoM reasons for refusal.

Some relevant sections of the FOI Act

Schedule of Documents – a very interesting list of 159 exempt documents comprising over 1600 pages plus 642 files – there may be some duplication.

This schedule shows the “peer review” process started at the end of August 2010 and the list ends on Christmas Eve – pretty much four months.

I am hoping that people smarter than I might see ways to carry on the battle to get these papers and files released.

What can be so secret about the things publicly funded scientists and bureaucrats do to adjust common garden old weather records into a form that suits them? We are not talking about nuclear weapons secrets here.

There were two other pdf files

References to papers on homogenising climate data;

The BoM covering letter to NIWA 14 Dec 2010 already public.

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