[email address] 
Mr N Leaton 
 
Direct tel:  +44(0)870 9000100 
Request-24804-
 
Direct fax:  +44(0)1392 885681 
[email address]
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
Our ref:   08-01-2010-115246-002                                      15 January 2010                                                   
 
 
 
 
Dear Mr Leaton 
  
Re: Freedom of Information  
 
Your further email dated 5 January 2010 has been considered to be a request for information 
in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000.  
 
You raised a subsidiary question relating to verbal agreements and asked “what are the 
names of the people who agreed to this verbal agreement?” 
 
The Met Office does not hold this information.  To explain, during the 1980’s the UEA/CRU 
was funded, primarily by the United States ‘Department of Energy’, to collate a global land 
temperature record. During this period they have undertaken several major updates to the 
record increasing station density and time series completeness.  The UEA/CRU has therefore 
managed the relationships with rights holders of the underpinning land station data since the 
1980s.  These rights holders are the many land station data providers across multiple 
countries.   
 
The UEA/CRU provided land station data to the Met Office for the sole purpose of updating 
and distributing a gridded data product which we freely distribute.  As part of this 
arrangement, the Met Office entered into a verbal confidentiality arrangement with the 
UEA/CRU whereby we do not have permission to release the underpinning land station data 
because the UEA/CRU itself does not have the authority to release this underpinning land 
station data from the multiple data providers.  Any such release would need to be agreed with 
those data providers.   
 
The confidentiality of these working practices has been established for decades and many 
Met Office employees have been involved in working relationships with the UEA/CRU since 
the 1980s.  The Met Office does not hold the names of the people who actually agreed this 
confidentiality arrangement.    
 
Some, but by no means all, of the restrictions placed upon the UEA/CRU at the time of data 
collection by some data providers are documented in Hulme, 1994 which includes costs and  
 
 

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restrictions for solely European data.  The full report is: The cost of climate data-a European 
experience, M Hulme, WEATHER, LONDON, 1994, ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
 
As advised in our letter of 5 January, the Met Office, with the UEA/CRU has written a letter to 
all rights holders requesting permission to publish the underlying station data. We are 
monitoring responses and actively pursuing the rights holders for a decision.  Data which we 
have quality controlled for the purpose of performing real-time updates since 2000 and for 
which we know for certain no restrictions apply are made freely available on the website:   
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/crutem3/data/download.html
 
I hope this answers your enquiry. 
 
The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and 
Patents Act 1988 (the Act).  Unless specifically permitted by the Act, any reproduction of the 
information, in whole or in part, requires the permission of the copyright holder. Most 
documents supplied by the Ministry of Defence will have been produced by government  
officials and will be Crown Copyright. You can find details on the arrangements for re-using 
Crown Copyright from the Office of Public Sector Information at: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/click-
use/index.htm
 
Information you receive may also include third party owned information. Such information 
must not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without first obtaining the permission of any such 
third party rights holder. 
 
If you are not satisfied with this response or you wish to complain about any aspect of the 
handling of your request, then you should contact me in the first instance. If informal 
resolution is not possible and you are still dissatisfied then you may apply for an independent 
internal review by contacting the Head of Corporate Information, 6th Floor, MOD Main 
Building, Whitehall, SW1A 2HB (e-mail [email address]). Please note that any request for 
an internal review must be made within 40 working days of the date on which the attempt to 
reach informal resolution has come to an end. 
 
If you remain dissatisfied following an internal review, you may take your complaint to the 
Information Commissioner under the provisions of Section 50 of the Freedom of Information 
Act. Please note that the Information Commissioner will not investigate your case until the 
MOD internal review process has been completed. Further details of the role and powers of  
the Information Commissioner can be found on the Commissioner's website, 
http://www.ico.gov.uk. 
 
Yours sincerely,  
 
 
FOI Manager               
 
 
 
 
 
 

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