Dear National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Limited,

Please provide any records (including but not limited to internal/external: documents, emails, notes, minutes, text messages, or social media messages) mentioning scientists Dr Ronan Connolly and/or Michael Connolly and/or Christopher Monckton.

For context - so that you can correctly identify the individuals - some links relevant to their work are mentioned in the links below.
1) This is the presentation of their findings that Earth's atmosphere is in thermo-dynamic equilibrium (directly opposite to a key IPCC assumption), and therefore CO2 cannot have any significant effect on the temperature of Earth's atmosphere.
https://youtu.be/XfRBr7PEawY
or
https://t.co/FolJ8vWmGL?amp=1

2) This is the Connolly's blog site where they publish their results:
https://globalwarmingsolved.com/

3) This is where their empirical discovery is talked about by Christopher Monckton as a potential Nobel Prize winning paper (once published).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti...
or
https://t.co/gPBhw9GolD?amp=1

Yours faithfully,

Chris Johnston

Dear Caroline Beamish,

Thank you for the reply to this OIA.

In closing off this request there are a couple of observations:
1) I realise that there is a history of acrimony around the climate topic but the email trails that mentioned Monckton do seem to highlight quite a defensive stance by some staff within NIWA. I wonder whether guidance might be given to NIWA staff in future to focus on the issues and arguments being raised as a way for "iron to sharpen iron".

2) The lack of awareness or discussion of the work by the Connollys is interesting. They have not published their work in a journal yet but the presentation and the NOAA Radiosonde dataset do provide a verification path for NIWA. Could I recommend that NIWA replicate the Connolly work (which is a relatively simple piece-wise regression), and establish the extent to which it obligates NIWA to:
(a) Establish a position on the degree to which it accepts or rejects the paper,
(b) Provide a caveat to its future climate forecasts - i.e. that there is strong evidence that CO2 and convection/radiance assumptions in the IPCC models may be about to undergo significant challenge
(c) Identify whether there is work within NIWA that may be relevant to proving/disproving its conclusions
(d) Assess if it influences any future work that NIWA has planned in the climate area and
(e) Whether there is a need to highlight any conclusions to stakeholders within the New Zealand economy who have been provided with analysis by NIWA (when it did not have the benefit of knowing about this research), and where significant economic decisions have subsequently been made.

In relation to (e), going forward, NIWA does need to take a view about these findings with paying clients of consulting services. While unofficial at this stage, these stunning results contradicting the core assumptions in simulation models relied upon by the IPCC, may mean that professional indemnity insurers need to be consulted on how to deal with this conflicting scientific evidence going forward.

POSTSCRIPT
A couple of links are quoted repeatedly in th eemail trails returned by NIWA. Some of these do and do not resolve because the NZ Herald have removed them from their website. For the purposes of the Public Records Act, you may appreciate knowing that they are available via the WayBackMachine :

"... good perspective on debating Monckton from his 2011 visit:"
https://web.archive.org/web/201911130546...

Newstalk ZB link from 2013 visit
https://web.archive.org/web/201305010000...

NZ Herald article from 2013 visit
https://web.archive.org/web/201911130554...

Monckton initiated response to NZ Herald 2013 article
https://web.archive.org/web/201304181218...

Yours sincerely,

Chris Johnston