U.N. weather meeting agrees to refine climate data

Britain's Met Office proposed that climate scientists around the world undertake the "grand challenge" of measuring land surface temperatures as often as several times a day, and allow independent scrutiny of the data — a move that would go some way toward answering demands by skeptics for access to the raw figures used to predict climate change.

"This effort will ensure that the datasets are completely robust and that all methods are transparent," the Met Office said. The agency added that "any such analysis does not undermine the existing independent datasets that all reflect a warming trend."

The proposal was approved in principle by some 150 delegates meeting under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization this week in Antalya, Turkey. It comes after e-mails stolen from a British university and several mistakes made in a 2007 report issued by the U.N.-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prompted public debate over the reliability of climate change predictions.

Skeptics claim scientists have secretly manipulated climate data and suppressed contrary views — allegations that have been denied by researchers and the climate change panel.

Nevertheless, the Met Office said current measurements were "fundamentally ill-conditioned to answer 21st century questions such as how extremes are changing and therefore what adaptation and mitigation decisions should be taken."

Ban Ki-moon urged environment ministers meeting in Bali, Indonesia, on Wednesday to reject attempts by skeptics to undermine efforts to forge a climate change deal, saying global warming poses "a clear and present danger."

In a message read by a U.N. official, Ban referred to the controversy over the 2007 climate panel report that drew widespread criticism and calls for the panel's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, to resign.

The report's conclusion that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 turned out to be incorrect, an error that bolstered arguments from climate skeptics that fears of global warming are overblown.

A U.N. conference in Copenhagen in December failed to achieve a binding deal on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. But Ban said it was important that the confrence set a target of keeping keep global temperatures from rising, and established a program of climate aid to poorer nations.