As the world's leaders began the summit on climate change in Copenhagen on Monday, over 1000 emails were leaked that allegedly support climate skeptics belief that reports on global warming have been exaggerated.
The emails, that are now being referred to as Climategate, supposedly contain messages from Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, England, that state the manipulation of data on climate change, according to CNN.
The data has played a major role in global warming research used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, which is largely considered the most authoritative report on the subject.
Skeptics of climate change are claiming the information collected by CRU since 1996 has been tampered with to show the decline of temperatures since the 1980's to present day.
Since the emails were leaked the head of CRU, Professor Phil Jones, has left his post while an investigation is being conducted.
CRU has released statements on their website saying there has never been an intent to deceive.
"The requirement for the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) was for up-to-date evidence showing how temperatures may have changed over the last 1000 years...there is an excellent agreement on the course of temperature change since 1881 between the data set that we contribute to and two other, independent analyses of worldwide temperature measurements."
The Deputy US Special Envoy for Climate Change, Jonathan Pershing, stated at a conference in Copenhagen that he doesn't feel Climategate will have any impact on the talks. Pershing said that there was more than enough "incredibly robust science" to back up climate change.
To show further evidence that climate change is real, Professor John Mitchell, the director of climate science for the UK's weather service, the Met Office, told CNN that the Met Office will publish reports that display the global land surface temperature record in an effort to show people that "climate data is sound".
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