Six Years of Fraud by the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) of the German Weather Service (DWD)

Since the summer of 2005 the GPCC pretends that the VASClimO dataset is produced by the GPCC (e.g. Rudolf and Schneider, 2005; Schneider et al., 2010, and many other reports). In fact this dataset is neither produced by means of the GPCC nor on behalf of it.

The GPCC (namely Dr. Bruno Rudolf, Tobias Fuchs, Dr. Andreas Becker, Udo Schneider, Anja Meyer-Christopher, Markus Ziese) repeatedly claimed that the VASClimO dataset has been interpolated by Ordinary Kriging and is interpolated on a base climatology of the GPCC. All of them were informed that these statements are wrong before they published them. They refused to look into the proof they got. They refused the offer to learn how the data are actually interpolated. The base climatology of the VASClimO dataset consists of the long-term means of the FAO Agromet Group. These data are not quality controlled though the GPCC pretends that this dataset is based on quality controlled data.

The supervisors of the GPCC got informed in good time about the fraudulent behavior of the GPCC (namely the division director Volker Vendt-Schmitt in 2003, the division director Dr. Helene Bartels in 2005, the member of the board Dr. Winfried Thommes in 2007, the president of the DWD from 2007 onwards) but refused to regard the proof of the unethical behavior of their stuff. Instead, after deliberately publishing wrong information, Dr. Bruno Rudolf and Tobias Fuchs got promoted to become division directors themselves. And I got sued by the DWD in the name of the Federal Republic of Germany for publicly saying an unpleasant truth.

References:

Rudolf, B. and U. Schneider (2005): Calculation of gridded precipitation for the global land-surface using in-situ gauge observations. Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop of the International Precipitation Working Group.

Schneider U., A. Becker, A. Meyer-Christoffer, M. Ziese, and B. Rudolf, 2010: Global Precipitation Analysis Products of the GPCC. Published at http://gpcc.dwd.de