The group's effort is independent of the UN-sponsored IPCC, which publishes reports on global warming roughly every five years, the last one in 2007. The Copenhagen Diagnosis aims to fill the gap on research since mid-2006 – the deadline for the 2007 IPCC report.
"There's new science and there's also three more years of data. In many instance, the observations show that climate change has accelerated," Dr. Somerville said in a briefing Tuesday on the report.
Controversy over hacked e-mails
The report is being released against the backdrop of the more than 1,000 e-mails pilfered from the Climatic Research Unit of the UK's University of East Anglia. Many of the e-mails are mundane. Some, however, give the appearance of scientists – including some involved in the Copenhagen Diagnosis – introducing fudge factors in presenting results. Others scoff at their colleagues' work and at critics outside the climate community who question approaches used by the e-mails' authors to process or interpret data. And they sometimes reveal a strong undercurrent of angst over what skeptics may make of their results.
The e-mails have generated a outcry among conservative commentators over the credibility of climate science. Many climate researchers say the e-mails do nothing to undercut the science behind global warming, which has been building for more than 100 years.
What the controversy really shows is a desire on all sides to maintain a myth about how science is conducted, says Daniel Sarewitz, co-director of Arizona State University's Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes.
