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Climate e-mails: man's mark is clear in thermometer record

Nature volume 463, page 25 (2010)Cite this article

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We welcome debate about the ethics of science prompted by the language of some of the hacked e-mails from the UK Climatic Research Unit (Nature 462, 545; 2009). Rightly or not, this has created concerns about the scientific process. But it is critical to point out that no grounds have arisen to doubt the validity of the thermometer-based temperature record since 1850.

Both the detection of climate change and its attribution to human activities rely on the thermometer-based temperature record (compiled by the Climatic Research Unit and other institutions). They do not rely on proxy reconstructions of temperature over the past millennium, which are based on indirect evidence such as tree rings. Reconstructions contribute less to our understanding of climate than the thermometer record because of uncertainty both in these reconstructions and in the drivers of climate change before the twentieth century.

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  1. Institute for Coastal Research, 21502 Geesthacht, Germany

    Hans von Storch

  2. Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PU, UK

    Myles Allen

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  1. Hans von Storch
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  2. Myles Allen
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von Storch, H., Allen, M. Climate e-mails: man's mark is clear in thermometer record. Nature 463, 25 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/463025a

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