Welcome to the Climate Explorer blog
Hey, welcome to the Climate Explorer blog! We plan to use this blog to keep you up to date as we add features & data sets to Climate Explorer, as well as linking to further reading on the source data sets and climate concepts related to the site. We may also talk a little about how the site is implemented behind the scenes.
What is Climate Explorer?
Climate Explorer was created to help people understand climate change. It’s focussed on trying to provide a simple and approachable interface for people to explore. The types of data include temperature, rainfall and large-scale weather patterns like ENSO (El Niño/La Niña) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). So far, we’ve focussed on Australia and New Zealand.
Who is the website for?
The website was created with climate sceptics in mind. It was created after one of the programmers started a review of Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate. We intend to contribute the review of this book, over multiple parts, on this blog.
Why?
The idea behind Climate Explorer was to provide an accessible website that allows users to explore the temperature data provided by the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). The initial focus was to permit the user to compare the adjusted temperature records with the unadjusted records. The BoM do a good job of explaining why they adjust the records over the long-term. Their reasoning is:
- a shift in the location of the station (for example, from a post office to an airport);
- a change in the environment around the station (for example a tree grows, a structure is built, a lawn is irrigated); or
- a change in measurement method (for example, from a manual instrument to a recording electronic instrument).
A sceptical response to the BoM may be: “you haven’t provided all of the evidence, so how are we supposed to make up our minds?” Climate Explorer allows the user to look at any location used in ACORN-SAT and compare the adjusted with the unadjusted records.
Contact us
If you have any feedback, suggestions or questions, feel free to let us know at climateexplorerteam@gmail.com.