LONDON - A fresh batch of some 5,000 emails from climate scientists of University of East Anglia were leaked on the internet on Tuesday, which may cause another ClimateGate ahead of an upcoming UN climate conference.

A similar release in 2009 triggered the ClimateGate before the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, which had a very negative impact on the outcome of that conference. Later several inquiries were conducted and accusations against the climate scientists were dismissed.

The freshly leaked emails and other documents were in a zipped file named FOIA2011 and circulated on several websites, and again it contains words like "the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it," according to the file downloaded by Xinhua correspondent.

University of East Anglia, whose Climate Research Unit is one of the most important institutions in this field and was in the center of the ClimateGate in 2009, responded quickly in a statement on Tuesday, which says "While we had only a limited opportunity to look at this latest post of 5,000 emails, we have no evidence of a recent breach of our systems."

"If genuine, (the sheer volume of material makes it impossible to confirm at present that they are all genuine) these emails have the appearance of having been held back after the theft of data and emails in 2009 to be released at a time designed to cause maximum disruption to the imminent international climate talks."

"This appears to be a carefully-timed attempt to reignite controversy over the science behind climate change when that science has been vindicated by three separate independent inquiries and number of studies -- including, most recently, the Berkely Earth Surface Temperature Group."

"As in 2009, extracts from emails have been taken completely out of context. Following the previous release of emails scientists highlighted by the controversy have been vindicated by independent review, and claims that their science cannot or should not be trusted are entirely unsupported. They, the University and the wider research community have stood by the science throughout, and continue to do so."

A new major UN climate conference will start on November 28 in Durban, South Africa. Many believe its outcome would be crucial in fighting climate change, because the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol will expire in 2012 and so far there is not a successive agreement.