A new study raises serious questions about yet another IPCC forecast of doom.

Les Hatton once fixed weather models at the Met Office. Having studied Maths at Cambridge, he completed his PhD as metereologist: his PhD was the study of tornadoes and waterspouts. He's a fellow of the Royal Meterological Society, currently teaches at the University of Kingston, and is well known in the software engineering community - his studies include critical systems analysis.

Hatton has released what he describes as an 'A-level' statistical analysis, which tests six IPCC statements against raw data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) Administration. He's published all the raw data and invites criticism, but warns he is neither "a warmist nor a denialist", but a scientist.

The IPCC goes on to make statements that would never pass peer review," Hatton told us. A more scientifically useful conclusion would have been to ask why there was a disparity. "This differential behaviour to me is very interesting. If it's due to increased warming in one place, and decreased warming in the other - then that's interesting to me."

Hatton has thirty years of experience of getting scientific papers published, but describes this one, available on his personal website, as "unpublishable".

"It's an open invitation to tell me I'm wrong," he says. He was prompted to look more closely by the Climategate emails, and by his years of experience with computer modelling. All code and data on which policy conclusions are made should be open and freely downloadable, he says - preferably with open tools.