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Ask HN: What are some good sources of climate data to analyze?

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Ask HN: What are some good sources of climate data to analyze?

#1

Post by rpeden »

I've noticed that articles mentioning climate and climate change that make it to the front page end up being flagged.

I think this is probably fair, because discussions about such articles invariably end up being political and don't end up contributing very positively to HN.

I certainly have thoughts and opinions on this topic, but upon reflection I realize they're not especially well informed. They're mainly based on what I've read in popular media, and I'm hoping I can do better than that.

So I'd like to approach it from another direction. If I want to get some raw climate data for myself, and analyze it using R or Python, what would be a good starting point?

Are there specific data sets that I should focus on? Are there any well known papers that I should read?

Re: Ask HN: What are some good sources of climate data to analyze?

#2

Post by sword_smith »

I have a Master's degree in physics from the University of Copenhagen and I have taught together with one of the leading climate scientists from that university Bo Møllesøe Vinther. He claimed that the best dataset on global average temperatures is satellite based and is the University of Alabama in Huntington dataset (UAH) which goes back to 1979.

You can find it here: https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/

Direct link for monthly temperature averages: http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6....

Re: Ask HN: What are some good sources of climate data to analyze?

#4

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

The National Centers for Environmental Information are probably a good place to start. Collection of links to data can be found here: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/quick-links. Alternatively there are some collected sets available here (which may be a little cleaner/ have some metatdata annotation): https://public.enigma.com/search/climate.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good sources of climate data to analyze?

#5

Post by sasheets »

Here's a compilation of links to get you started: https://tamino.wordpress.com/climate-data-links/

Climate science is a big subject and you should start by understanding the basics of the subject. Spencer Weart's history of climate science is a good place to start: https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htm

Also, I see many people with strong statistics/engineering backgrounds analyzing climate data and coming to wrong conclusions because they never bothered to learn the physics. Don't be those people.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good sources of climate data to analyze?

#8

Post by mindcrime »

It's slightly tangential, but you might find this project, and the surrounding community, to be of interest.

https://climate.apache.org/

Also, in addition to historical data that's already collected and available online, an interesting side note is that it's possible to directly receive some satellite data yourself using a relatively inexpensive SDR (Software Defined Radio) device. This article deals specifically with receiving images from NOAA satellites, but there are probably other signals floating around out there that would be useful to you.

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-receiving-noaa-weat...

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