Phil Jones (climatologist)

Philip D. Jones ( Philip Douglas " Phil" Jones, born 1952 ) is a British climatologist at the University of East Anglia.

Scientific Work

Jones has a BA in Environmental Sciences from Lancaster University and MSc and PhD from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He is particularly known for his continuation of the instrumental temperature measurements in the climate field. He has thus provided significant contributions to Chapter 12 ( Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes ) and the Third Assessment Report in 2001 and 2007 published IPCC reports, and was lead author of the chapter 3, Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change of the AR4.

As co - director of the Climatic Research Unit, he worked with Jean Palutikof from 1998-2004 and became the sole director.

Hacker attack on the Climatic Research Unit and subsequent investigations

Once in a hacker attack of the CRU emails stolen and had been published on the Internet, allegations of data manipulation and disregard scientific standards against Jones and several of his colleagues were raised by climate skeptics. Jones left his post as director of the CRU then rest for the time being. The work of climate scientists at the CRU have been carefully examined in the wake of three independent commissions of inquiry. The Scientific Committee of the British Parliament came in March 2010 on the conclusion that the scientists at the CRU no reproach could be done. It can not be assumed that the scientists had tried in the rejection of requests on research results, to let the public about climate data in the dark. A joint commission of inquiry of the British Royal Society and the University of East Anglia, chaired by Ronald Oxburgh also exonerated Jones and his colleagues. There is " no evidence of deliberate scientific misconduct ," the researchers to Jones would have done their job " fairly and accurately " and are used in data processing have been " objectively and dispassionately ". The commission of inquiry also condemned the sharp tone of the climate skeptics. A third commission of inquiry chaired by Sir Muir Russell came after six months of testing and hearing numerous witnesses ultimately lead to the conclusion that the charges against Jones and his colleagues allegations of data manipulation and suppression of critics were unjustified. The key data for the reproducibility of their findings had been any competent interested parties accessible, also there was no evidence of subversion of the peer review process. Criticism was only an inadequate degree of openness on the part of researchers and unintentionally misleading labeling of a graph of 1999. Nevertheless, there is no doubt about the honesty and discipline of the researcher.

The allegations raised in the meantime loaded Jones claims to be so much that he thought about suicide. In addition, he has received numerous death threats.

Jones was transferred in July 2010 in the newly created post of Research Director. The university stressed that this in no way constituted a demotion.

Awards

  • Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geophysical Society
  • The International Journal of Climatology Prize of the Royal Meteorological Society.
  • Outstanding Scientific Paper Award of the Environmental Research Laboratories / NOAA for the publication A search for Human Influences on the Thermal Structure of the Atmosphere, Benjamin D. Santer et al., In Nature, 382, 39-46 (1996).

Publications (selection)

  • Raymond S. Bradley (eds.): Climate Since AD 1500. 2nd edition. Routledge 1995, ISBN 0415120306
  • Raymond S. Bradley & Jean Jouzel (eds.): Climatic Variations and Forcing Mechanisms of the Last 2000 Years. Springer, 1996, ISBN 3540606955
  • Astrid EJ Ogilvie, Timothy J. Osborn & Keith R. Briffa (ed.): History and Climate: Memories of the Future? Springer, 2001, ISBN 0306465892
  • With Dario Camuffo (ed.): Improved Understanding of Past Climatic Variability from Early Daily European Instrumental Sources. Springer, 2002, ISBN 1402005563
  • With Timothy J. Osborn & Keith R. Briffa: Estimating Sampling Errors in Large - Scale Temperature Averages. In: Journal of Climate. Vol 10, Issue 10, 1997, pp. 2548-2568 (PDF, 993 KB)
  • With Timothy J. Osborn & Keith R. Briffa: The Evolution of Climate Over the Last Millennium. In: Science. Vol 292, no. 5517, 2001, doi: 10.1126/science.1059126, p 662-667
  • Anders Moberg: Hemispheric and Large - Scale Surface Air Temperature Variations: An Extensive Revision and Update to 2001 in In. Journal of Climate. Vol 16, Issue 2, 2003, doi: 10.1175/1520-0442 { 2003 } 016 < 0206: HALSSA > 2.0.CO; 2, pp. 206-223
  • Michael E. Mann: Global Surface Temperatures over the Past Two Millennia. In: Geophysical Research Letters. Vol 30, Issue 15, 2003, doi: 10.1029/2003GL017814 (PDF, 156 KB)
  • Michael E. Mann: Climate over past millennia. In: Reviews of Geophysics. Vol 42, 2004, doi: 10.1029/2003RG000143 (PDF, 1.39 MB)
  • David H. Lister & Qingxiang Li: Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with emphasis on in China. In: Journal of Geophysical Research. Volume 113, Issue D16, 2008, doi: 10.1029/2008JD009916 (PDF, 378 KB)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC Third Assessment Report Science (journal) Digital Object Identifier
628881
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