Culture

Quiet pride

The entrance to the world-leading Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia is typically understated – a sign printed on A4 green paper taped to the door indicates your arrival.

There is a sense of quiet pride within the Unit – recent publications, research posters, certificates celebrating achievements and team photographs are modestly displayed on the walls.

The space feels distinctly non-corporate, and somewhat removed from the more recently refurbished School of Environmental Sciences building that it is adjoined to.

Community

A strong sense of community permeates the culture of CRU. Members find time for a daily crossword in the common space, take turns to cook a group lunch once a week, and head off to a local café for lunch every Friday.

In recent years the CRU community has faced threats from the University’s management to merge the Unit’s space with that of its larger parent department and turn their common space into offices. Such a move would likely disrupt the strong community bonds observed within CRU and the team have so far been able to resist these threats to their space.

The sense of community within CRU stretches beyond the protective walls of the Unit, expanding into the networks of global scientific collaboration, and historically towards the founders of the Unit and early climate scientists.

The current work of CRU on the CRUTEM4 dataset is based upon principles of trust and collaboration within the international scientific community:

“A lot of it is on we’re trusting their work.”

“Everyone’s a link in a chain.”

The founders of CRU were perceived to provide “a strength and a foundation” from which the Unit could grow. Some Unit members also felt a strong sense of connection to earlier observers of the climate such as British school teacher Guy Stewart Callendar whose climate records and diaries produced in the 1950s–60s were held for many years at CRU.

External threats

For the researchers of CRU, the starting point for their work is the data that has flowed into the Unit over the years from stations such as Sheffield Weston Park.

The output of their work on CRUTEM4 and earlier versions – evidence of warming of the global climate – threatens many established interests, some of whom refuse to accept the findings and attempt to generate scepticism about the results amongst the public and policy makers:

“The Koch Foundation. It’s two brothers. They’ve been funding loads of right wing organisations all across America in various things and they have massive input into the Senate and the House of Representatives. They want a status quo, basically, they want to continue burning the fossil fuels and everything.”

Most notably this threat from climate change ‘scepticism’ resulted in the hacking of the Unit’s email system in November 2009, which is discussed on the Policy page.

Integrity

Integrity is a core value and is keenly defended by members of the Unit when it is brought into question by those outside:

“A lot of people outside, especially the critics, think we’re all sort of evangelistic environmentalists who are frantically trying to change society and everything else to try and save the planet. But for me, I just want to get to the truth, and it’s reliable datasets, the best we can do at this point in time, that’s my real interest. We have to be unbiased as scientists to do what we do.”

“[We’ve had] a little bit of money from the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, I’ve forgotten what it’s called now, over the years to one or two things, but when you do work for them–, well, we’ve also had money from BP and Shell over the years, you give them what you find. You don’t give them what they want, you give them what you find and these sceptics can’t seem to understand that.

“It’s the same with any government money or research council money, or EU, you’re not giving them what they want, you’re giving them what the data says.”

The public attack on the integrity of the Unit during 2009 was sorely felt:

“People were trying to trash our reputation.”

Humour

The results of their data processing – evidence of warming of the global climate and threats from climate change sceptics – carries a burden.

Humour appears to play a role in attempting to lighten this load, as seen in a local newspaper cartoon that hangs on the common room wall which features three unconscious CRU researchers and a newspaper headline reporting praise for the Unit alongside the caption “No wonder the poor beggars fainted – this is the first cheerful news that’s ever come out of this department”.

Humour is also used to dilute the symbolic power of their aggressors:

“Their surname is K-o-c-h, so we might call them Koch, but apparently in America they’re pronounced ‘Coke’.”

Data sharing

Data sharing is perceived to be an important practice within the CRU community. The gridded datasets produced by CRU have always been shared freely with other climate scientists.

In the past, there were restrictions on the sharing of the weather station data underlying the CRUTEM database. These restrictions often resulted from the terms and conditions agreed with meteorological services that provided CRU with access to their station data many years ago. These restrictions were not necessarily taken lightly by CRU members however:

“As someone who works in climate, you often despise these attitudes, but you’ve got to be able to see why people might not want them to be publicly available.”

As discussed in the Policy section, CRU’s data sharing practices faced scrutiny in 2009–10. The Information Commissioner’s Office ruled that a breach of the Environmental Information Regulations (2004) had occurred in response to a request to the University for access to some of the weather station data underlying the CRUTEM dataset. A House of Commons Committee also reported issues around the transparent publishing of data and methods by CRU – although recognised that practice was “in line with common practice in the climate science community” [Commons Select Committee].

Since the events of 2009–10, CRU has taken an active role to push for the publication of the data sources used to produce the CRUTEM4 dataset and promote more transparency around how the dataset is produced. CRUTEM4 now only uses station data that can be made publicly available.