Exploring climate and carbon data

What do the data say?

Earth is careening toward a catastrophic future due to humankind’s pervasive influence on inputs and outputs to local and global ecosystem cycles, energy flow, and landscape modification.

In order to familiarize ourselves with some of these changes, we will find data that is available online from reputable sources, download it, graph it, and try to make sense of it.

There is a great deal of data available in forms that can be easily opened as a spreadsheet. Sometimes these data are available as CSV or comma-separated values. Other times, they are in a slightly different form.

Note that for some links below, you may need to right-click to open the link in a new tab (Mac, Ctrl-click).

To begin this process, we will discuss how we

• find,
• download,
• display,
• interpret, and
• document such data sets.

Viewing downloaded data

Usually downloading data is the easy part. It will usually come in one of two ASCII formats: tab-delimited (.txt) or comma-delimited (.csv). To open these in a spreadsheet application, you can probably right-click (Mac, Ctrl-click) to select the application you will use to open it. Alternatively, you may have to first open the application and use the menu option to open the file. Once you have it in a spreadsheet application, you can save it in some other format if you like.

I have set up a shared Google Slides document to which each of you will add your exploration into this wide, wide world of data.

Where do we find reputable data? Do we base our assessment on the appreance of the website? Do we trust the federal agencies charged with tracking the environment, or do we think there is a deep state conspiracy to trick us into believing that there is an emergency that requires us to give up our personal liberty?

Uploading our findings

After we have made a graph of data related to global ecological cycles or climate change, we insert the graph, and supporting text, into this Google Slide presentation.

U.S. Environmenal Protection Agency

When I searched for climate data, one of the first reputable sites I found was part of the U.S. Environmenal Protection Agency, the ‘EPA’. The EPA is part of the Executive Branch and was established in December 1970, under the administration of President Nixon. It is charged with, oddly enough, protecting the environment. It conducts and funds research, and sets and enforces environmental standards for the delivery of ecosystem services, such as the availability of clean air and water for U.S. citizens. This is the agency that is supposed to protect our drinking water, our air, and the ecosystem services that make clean water and clean air possible.

Here is an example of a workflow I tried:

• I used the Google search engine and searched for ‘epa climate data’.
• Selected ‘Climate Change Indicators in the United States | US EPA’.
• At Climate Change Indicators website, I explored a variety of lists of information about climate change.
• After thinking about all my options I selected Climate Forcing, from the list of "Greenhouse gases’.

Figure 1: Note the spreadsheet icon in the lower left. Image is a screenshot from an EPA climate indicators webpage.

• I looked around for data download options. I wanted to find a link where I could download just the data, in spreadsheet form. I discovered that I could download the data, or a graph. The screenshot below is from the EPA website, and in the bottom left corner, you can see two icons, one of which looks like a spreadsheet. I selected that.
• The spreadsheet icon link caused the CSV data to load into my browser (imgae below). I saved this browser page as a ‘.csv’ file, which I was then able to open in my spreadsheet application.

Figure 2: Screenshot of data available at EPA link.

• In my spreadsheet, I could make a graph of something important related to the global ecology of climate change. I preferred to use R, but that was a personal preference.
• As I make the graph, I make sure that the axes are labelled and that the units are clear.

After I make the graph, I add text that describes the important messages that the graph displays, including a little necessary background information.

The radiative forcing of a greenhouse gas is its heat-trapping capacity. Different gases have different inherent heat-trapping capacities. The total radiative forcing seen in this figure (3) is the product of the total amount of the gas in the atmosphere and the heat-trapping capacity of the particular gas. Based on these data, it is clear that the heat-trapping capacity in the atmosphere conitnuing to increase - our greenhouse blanket is getting thicker. It is interesting to note that to important CFCs are declining. This is the result of the Montreal Protocol, and international political agreement that had bipartisan US political support. This agreement, and a subsequent amendment banned the vast majority of the production and use of these materials. Those were the days before the protection of the environment became political.

Uploading our findings

After you have made a graph of data related to global ecological cycles or climate change, we insert the graph, and supporting text, into this Google Slide presentation.

Oddly enough, the EPA appears to have stopped reporting on environmental climate change in 2016. Sadly, this is part of a pattern. Therefore, I went in search of more data.

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) does a lot more than just send astronauts into space. They need to study everything about the atmosphere and Earth’s interaction with our sun. Hence, they are really into climate.

Try NASA’s Vital Signs website. In addition to great graphics and links to the associated data.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is part the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, and their website lists three core missions:

1. To understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans and coasts;
2. To share that knowledge and information with others; and
3. To conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources.

Businesses want to know the facts about the environment to help them thrive in their week to week, year to year operations.

NOAA was formed in 1970 under the Nixon administration, and it combined three former agencies: the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Weather Bureau and the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries. A lot happened in 1970, in response to the environmnetal degradation people say around. For instance, Ohio’s Cuyahoga River caught fire (again) in 1969, to the surprise of no one who lived in Cleveland.

Here is what I did to find climate data at NOAA:

• I used the Google search engine and searched for ‘NOAA climate data’.
• Selected ‘Climate Data Online - National Climatic Data Center - NOAA’.
• This took me to NOAA’s environmental data site, where I was a little overwhelmed but happy with all the options I had to explore. I selected the ‘Browse Data Sets’ icon.
• I found myself in the ‘Climate Data Online Search’ tool. I used the Mapping Tool to identify a weather station that had long term data available.
• I then selected yearly data summaries for that station. After submitting that request, I was taken to page where I could select which climate variables I wanted.
• After completely specifying what data I wanted and going to my shopping cart, I entered my email address so that they could send me a link to the free data.