ClimateGate 2: Russia accuses the British Met Office of cherry-picking data that substantiates AGW theory while omitting data that does not

While Gordon Brown and many other world leaders are in Copenhagen claiming to be trying to 'save the world' from Mother Nature (whilst raising taxes, obviously), there's yet another ClimateGate storm brewing.

The eye of the storm on this occasion is directly over the heads of the British Met Office.

Russian news agencies are full of reports asking questions of the Met Office after the Russian Institute of Economic Analysis claimed that the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Research Unit "probably tampered" with climate data from Russia and Siberia.

Specifically, some of the allegations from Russia read as follows:

On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country's territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.

On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations.

IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.

The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world's land mass. The IEA said it was necessary to recalculate all global-temperature data in order to assess the scale of such exaggeration.

In their report on this story, the Daily Express cites Professor Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute in Washington, who says: "There is a significant lack of data coming from Russia in the last decade and a half. [...] We want to know more about the Hadley Centre’s report but they won’t show us the raw data."

Several hat-tips are necessary in this blog post, so congratulations on blogging par excellence to the lovely folk at EU Referendum, the Daily Telegraph's brilliant blogging star James Delingpole, good honest and brave British journalism from the Daily Mail and the Daily Express (which puts the story on today's front page - see image at top of this blog post).