Maybe we should ask Olive Heffernan exactly who these “Met Office Hadley Centre project partners” were, and why they couldn’t have been directed to a file with more security. The idea of an “anonymous ftp server” being loaded for use of a specific few is absurd.

I mean, how do they know that the users of this file were academics, or would agree to the “confidentiality” that Jones requested?

Or for that matter, what system was set up to prevent public use?

It transpires, however, that these data were on an anonymous ftp server intended for Met Office Hadley Centre project partners only, and were not for public use.

I apologise for the cost factor, but I don’t set it. Really, I think this past data have already been funded by the taxpayer.

It would be easy to send you selected indices and long datasets, especially ones that I have analysed, but there are strict copyright provisions that I do not intend to break.

(I’m not invoking the infamous “Why should I send you all this work when all you want to do is criticise it?”)

Some of the references are cost free, but you need to go beyond Excel if you have not already, to condense them into bite-sized chunks. And as I have posted before, there are discrepancies between compliers of the data to the extent that it’s a bit hard to tell what is real and what is make-believe.

Please persevere with the Aussie data. It’s quite rewarding and shrouded with less muck and mystery than that from some other countries. I’m happy to help.

I really am searching for series that are as long as possible, and wonder whether there is an index of any sort. Have not tried very hard to find one – just hoping that someone knows about these things.

Your comments on “old” data are interesting. I am perhaps more sanguine (or naive) about old data. Really old stuff, such as for Berlin and other places in Europe, always impress me with their consistency. The techniques I use tend to draw attention to data that are unreliable or “fiddled”, and so far the old values seem to have suffered less than some of the modern ones, which can show signs of prior treatment, like smoothing, before publication. Those old investigators were perhaps a bit more upfront about their work than those engaged on climate research these days.

Robin