No Data Manipulation in 2015 Climate Study, Researchers Say

In an article that appeared online in The Mail on Sunday, a British tabloid, the journalist David Rose described “astonishing evidence” that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States had “rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris agreement on climate change.”

“Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data,” the article’s headline read.

What’s all the fuss about?

Mr. Rose, who has made climate-related claims in the past that did not hold up to scrutiny, said a “high-level whistle-blower,” John J. Bates, a recently retired scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, had told him that the agency “breached its own rules on scientific integrity” in publishing the study in June 2015.

According to Mr. Rose, the study, which refuted earlier work that suggested global warming had slowed in the first decade of this century, “was aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders” at the talks in Paris in December 2015 that led to the agreement by more than 190 nations to set limits on carbon emissions.

After Mr. Rose’s article was published, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and its chairman, Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, wrote about it on Twitter.