Climate research chief Phil Jones stands down pending inquiry into leaked emails

Director denies conspiracy claims and stands by scientists' findings on global warming

• Alok Jha and agencies
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 December 2009 22.03 GMT
• Article history

The head of the climate research unit that had its emails hacked and posted online will step down from his post while an inquiry into the affair is carried out.

Messages between scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were posted on the web last week, and climate-change deniers seized on them as alleged evidence that scientists have been hiding and manipulating data to support the idea that the world is warming up.

Phil Jones sais he would stand aside until an independent review into the hacked emails had been completed. Photograph: University of East Anglia

The head of the climate research unit that had its emails hacked and posted online will step down from his post while an inquiry into the affair is carried out.

Messages between scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were posted on the web last week, and climate-change deniers seized on them as alleged evidence that scientists have been hiding and manipulating data to support the idea that the world is warming up.

Professor Phil Jones, the director of the CRU, said he stood by the science produced by his researchers and suggestions of a conspiracy to alter evidence to support a theory of man-made global warming were "complete rubbish". But he said today that he would stand aside as director of the unit until an independent review into the hacked emails had been completed.

"What is most important is that CRU continues its world-leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible," he said. "After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the director's role during the course of the independent review and am grateful to the university for agreeing to this. The review process will have my full support."

Emails between researchers at the centre were obtained by hackers and then published on websites run by climate sceptics. Some argue that the timing, just before next week's major climate talks in Copenhagen, seems meant to undermine the negotiations.

Critics of the argument that global warming is human-induced say the emails show evidence of collusion by scientists. Some claimed that the contents of some emails suggested scientists prevented work they did not agree with from being included in the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2007. But earlier this week, Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the IPCC, said there was "virtually no possibility" of a few climate scientists biasing the advice given to governments by the UN. He said that the large number of contributors and rigorous peer review mechanism adopted by the IPCC meant that any bias would be rapidly uncovered.

He was responding in particular to one email from 2004 in which Phil Jones said of two papers he regarded as flawed: "I can't see either … being in the next [IPCC] report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Pachauri said: "People should be discreet … in this day and age anything you write, even privately, could become public and to put anything down in writing is, to say the least, indiscreet … It is another matter to talk about this to your friends on the telephone or person to person, but to put it down in writing was indiscreet. If someone was to say something like this in an IPCC authors' meeting then there are others who would chew him up."

Peter Liss, a specialist in interaction between the oceans and atmosphere at UEA, will stand in as acting director of the CRU while the review is conducted. The university's vice-chancellor, Edward Acton, said: "I have accepted Professor Jones's offer to stand aside during this period. It is an important step to ensure that CRU can continue to operate normally and the independent review can conduct its work into the allegations."

The economist Nick Stern said the views of those who doubted the scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming were "muddled and unscientific". He admitted that all views should be heard, but said the degree of scepticism among "real scientists" was very small. The evidence for global warming stretches back more than 800,000 years, he said. "This is evidence that is overwhelming, from all sources, that's the kind of climate science we're talking about. I think it is very important that those with any kind of views on the science or economics have their say - that does not mean that unscientific muddle also has the right to be recognised as searing insight."

He added: "If they are muddled and confused, they do not have the right to be described as anything other than muddled and confused."

The move received a welcome from many involved in environmental non-government organisations.

One leading environmental campaigner said: "It seems like a sensible course of action – finally, the CRU seem to be getting their public response in order. But any reading of the emails in context would lead to the conclusion that nothing untoward happened here at all."