---

Climategate scientist 'hid flaws in data', say sceptics
...Climate sceptics have suggested that some of the higher readings may be due not to a warmer atmosphere, but to the so-called "urban heat island effect", where cities become reservoirs of heat and are warmer than the surrounding countryside, especially during the night hours.

Professor Jones and a colleague, Professor Wei-Chyung Wang of the State University of New York at Albany suggested in an influential 1990 paper in the journal Nature that the urban heat island effect was minimal – and cited as supporting evidence a long series of temperature measurements from Chinese weather stations, half in the countryside and half in cities, supplied by Professor Wei-Chyung. The Nature paper was used as evidence in the most recent report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

However, it has been reported that when climate sceptics asked for the precise locations of the 84 stations, Professor Jones at first declined to release the details. And when eventually he did release them, it was found that for the ones supposed to be in the countryside, there was no location given. ...