The files include about a decade of e-mail correspondence belonging to Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Shortly after news of the leak began circulating Thursday, critics of global warming science on some of the messages as evidence of bias in the climate research community.

Jones' e-mails offer some candid insight into the thoughts of a noted climate researcher and his peers.

A spokeswoman with the University of East Anglia confirmed that the data was taken from a university server, but noted that because "of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm what proportion of this material is genuine."

"We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved the police in this enquiry," she added.

On Friday, the research unit's Web site had been moved to an emergency Web server, presumably as a result of the breach.