The Weather Research Unit Temperature Version 4 (CRUTEM4) land-surface air temperature dataset is among the most broadly used records from the climate system.
The brand new Google Earth format enables customers to scroll all over the world, focus on 6,000 weather stations, and examine monthly, periodic and annual temperature data easier than in the past.
Customers can drill lower to determine some 20,000 graphs -- most of which show temperature records dating back 1850.
The move belongs to a continuing effort to create data about past climate and global warming as accessible and transparent as you possibly can.
Dr Tim Osborn from UEA's Weather Research Unit stated: "The good thing about using Google Earth is you can instantly see in which the weather stations are, focus on specific nations, and find out station datasets a lot more clearly.
"The information itself originates from the most recent CRUTEM4 figures, that have been freely on our website and through the Met Office. But we would have liked to create this key temperature dataset as interactive and user-friendly as you possibly can.Inch
Google's Earth interface shows the way the globe continues to be split up into 5? latitude and longitude power grid boxes. The boxes are about 550km wide across the Equator, thinning for the South and north rods. This red-colored and eco-friendly checkerboard covers the majority of Earth and signifies regions of land where station data can be found. Hitting a power grid box discloses the area's annual temps, in addition to links to more in depth downloadable station data.
But as the new initiative does allow greater ease of access, the study team do anticipate finding errors.
Dr Osborn stated: "This dataset combines monthly records from 6,000 weather stations all over the world -- most of which go as far back greater than 150 years. That's lots of data, therefore we would anticipate seeing a couple of errors. We greatly persuade folks to alert us to the records that appear unusual.
"You will find some gaps within the power grid -- it is because you will find no weather stations in remote areas like the Sahara. Customers could also place the location of some weather stations isn't exact. It is because the data we've concerning the latitude and longitude of every station is restricted to at least one decimal place, therefore the station markers might be a couple of kms in the actual location.
"This is not an issue scientifically since the temperature records don't rely on the actual location of every station. But it's a thing that will improve with time weight loss detailed location information opens up.Inch
This new initiative is referred to inside a new information paper released on Feb 4 within the journal Earth System Science Data (Osborn T.J. and Johnson P.D., 2014: The CRUTEM4 land-surface air temperature dataset: construction, previous versions and distribution via Google Earth).
The CRUTEM4 data set can be obtained from doi:10.5285/EECBA94F-62F9-4B7C-88D3-482F2C93C468.
