More to just visualising the Climate Data sets .. there is a harder part that we have always being talking out ‘Data Sharing’. This is one of the points that I have seen hard core Climate Scientists/ climatologists (from the meteo and ocean communities) and the other bounded ones like (agriculture, water resources et al.) are talking of.

The later ones have always been an integral part of GI and thus were always discussed under the SDI’s and the related data sharing issues. However, the surprising move I see in India is that this issue of data sharing has always been ignored for a lot of the time. However, there is a hope with the new data policy that will be on the plates in the next month and this outcome mandating ‘Data Sharing’ and I got this message that the issue of climate change was able to break those clutches.

Still this is on policy mode – and I hope to see some real progress interms of sharing of (geospatial)data that is central to the core issue – The Climate Change.

Would like to hear from my alien-geo-spatial friends on similar aspects.

5 Dec 2009: “The Met Office has written to 188 countries for permission to publish material, dating back 160 years from more than 1,000 weather stations around the world, which it says proves climate change is caused by humans. Its database is a main source of analysis for the UN’s climate change science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which joins talks next week at the long-awaited Copenhagen summit. John Mitchell, head of climate science at the Met Office, told the BBC the evidence for man-made global warming was overwhelming – and the planned release of data would show that. “So this is not an issue of whether we are confident or not in the figures for the trend in global warming, it’s more about being open and transparent,” he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8396696.stm

Rich

The melting of Siberian permafrost is a huge worry a it would result in large quantities of CO2 being released. That would increase the atmospheric content in a very short period of time which could have a profound effect on climate.

The point i forgot to mention in my comment was that the simple typo by the scientist has allowed the press to say that the scientists results were wrong and that Himalayan glaciers are defying climate change. Unfortunately, while some of the Himalayan glaciers are not melting as fast as once thought, many are and the presence of huge supra-glacial and en-glacial lakes is a worry for those living in the valleys.

Science must be squeaky clean as its results will be attacked and misinterpreted by climate skeptics. Just look at what is going on at UAE http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/8389727.stm

Firstly, that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was stable at between 0.00026 and 0.00028% before we started adding to it at the beginning of the industrial age and that it is now about about 0.00038% (about 40% higher); that we are adding some 27 gigatonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere each year which is increasing the concentration by 3% a year and that the rate of release is still rising.[1] This can easily be modeled in a spreadsheet and tested with different amounts of gases emitted being emitted in each of the forthcoming years.

People might also like to model what will happen if various other chemicals that are locked away in the permafrost and under the sea are released as the earth reaches a warming ‘tipping point’ due to our actions; chemicals that are estimated to be powerful enough to increase the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by over 10 times, including 11,000 gigatonnes of methane clathrates. Some scientists believe that we are very close to the temperature when these other greenhouse gases would be released with devastating consequences.[2]

This future greenhouse gas model is very simple and can be made using a spreadsheet in minutes. Different tipping points can be used to model what happens when these other chemicals get released. As a result of making this model some years ago I am now working hard to help develop ways of living where we can dramatically reduce our emissions.

Incidentally the scientific community consensus is still that climate change is a very real and serious issue despite what the skeptics say.[3] I have investigated the skeptics claims that this whole thing is nonsense recently and find their arguments very unconvincing.

All my references are to well sourced article on Wikipedia produced by the general public, some of whom where probably in their bedrooms – the references from these articles are mainly to high quality professional sources produced by people who were probably not in their bedrooms.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_consensus

However, there is a huge stramash in the glaciological community at the moment. This centres around Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035. Unfortunately this appears to have been a typo and should have read 2350 or something. But the date has made it into lots of papers including the IPCC WG II paper.

Mistakes happen, especially when you are pushing research forward, science needs to try to limit mistakes and make itself easier to understand. Copenhagen should be interesting.

One of these detailed global digital maps is OpenStreetMap – a link would have been nice, so here it is: http://openstreetmap.org