Much of the discussion in recent days has been motivated by the idea that climate science is somehow unfairly restricting access to raw data upon which scientific conclusions are based. This is a powerful meme and one that has clear resonance far beyond the people who are actually interested in analysing data themselves. However, many of the people raising this issue are not aware of what and how much data is actually available.
Therefore, we have set up a page of data links to sources of temperature and other climate data, codes to process it, model outputs, model codes, reconstructions, paleo-records, the codes involved in reconstructions etc. We have made a start on this on a new Data Sources page, but if anyone has other links that we’ve missed, note them in the comments and we’ll update accordingly.
The climate science community fully understands how important it is that data sources are made as open and transparent as possible, for research purposes as well as for other interested parties, and is actively working to increase accessibility and usability of the data. We encourage people to investigate the various graphical portals to get a feel for the data and what can be done with it. The providers of these online resources are very interested in getting feedback on any of these sites and so don’t hesitate to contact them if you want to see improvements.
Update: Big thank you to all for all the additional links given below. Keep them coming!
Hank (499), you might have a logical point, but the assertion was that we have OBSERVED the rise in temperature following the CO2 concentration rise to 550 (if I recall his number correctly) — I don’t think that has been done in paleo studies. Even so proxies, projected or not are not the same as OBSERVATIONS — though this might be getting picky.
Rod B, the paleo work is done from observations of proxies: “a window on the past.”
Would you only use the word “observation” for watching a thermometer? Sure you can rule anything out if you split the hairs finely enough and argue definitions. You know where that leads.
Even daily records are mostly obtained nowadays via proxies, and the data has to be worked on to get a signal from the noise.
This is about data sets — all sorts.
Chad and JL mentioned NCDC with links earlier.
NCDC has pages on specific subjects, in very straightforward form, along with extensive references and links to the data. Here, for example, is the page on abrupt climate change:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/references.html
World Monthly Surface Station Climatology, 1738-cont
http://dss.ucar.edu/datasets/ds570.0/
Hank Roberts says:
12 December 2009 at 9:47 PM
Rod B, the paleo work is done from observations of proxies: “a window on the past.”
Would you only use the word “observation” for watching a thermometer? Sure you can rule anything out if you split the hairs finely enough and argue definitions. You know where that leads.
Even daily records are mostly obtained nowadays via proxies, and the data has to be worked on to get a signal from the noise.
By the picky standards evidenced here even a thermometer is a proxy, you’re actually observing the expansion of a fluid not temperature!
Happened on this collection while looking up something else.
I can’t vouch for its contents in any way.
It says UPDATED with a blink tag on some items.
http://climate.geog.udel.edu/~climate/html_pages/archive.html
http://www.mccip.org.uk/summaryaims.html
The primary aim of the MCCIP is to provide a co-ordinating framework within the UK for the transfer of high-quality marine climate change impacts evidence and advice to policy advisors and decision-makers. In particular, the Partnership will act as the primary focus for the supply of evidence and advice to partners to enable them to individually and collectively plan for the challenges and opportunities presented by the impacts of climate change in the marine environment.
Relationships with other UK marine monitoring groups ….
http://www.mccip.org.uk/images/MCCIPrelationships.gif
I am not a climate scientist and have never seen any climate data until today. But I do know how to think.
A post today on Broadstuff OPEN DATA VS GLOBAL WARMING caught my eye and just seemed suspicious. The poster though he had analyzed the “open data” provided by the Met Office and saw no trend in his graph so concluded “Its an inconvenient truth, but the benefits of Open Data cut many ways, pulling down myths with little respect for whose they are.”
The graphon his website was a confusing mishmash produced by a site http://ww.geo.me. It is no wonder he could discern no pattern.
Having never seen a climate chart or any climate data, but with fundamental math skills and the ability to read the simple source material, I was able to come up with a graph that showed what to me was a more obvious trend chart of the anomalies at the Port Elizabeth South Africa land stationin less that an hour.
This is perhaps the problem when so many in the country lack fundamental analytical skills.