Data Sources for Global Temperatures (Primary & Secondary)

Factual Questions
1

Dear SDMB,

The most prominent science-related issue in today’s political discourse is likely the temperature of earth’s environment(s), and how human behavior may be affecting the temperature. In an attempt to better familiarize myself with this subject, I’m trying to learn what data are being used by members of the scientific community. I want to learn more about any “major” data sets that are cited a lot, but all other data sets as well, including lesser cited ones.

So far my understanding of existing data sources is the following:

  1. Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) has a twenty year data set of satellite data. This measures reflected wavelengths of various light in the atmosphere, and these data are then analyzed to calculate temperature data. Thus, the data collected by the RSS satellites is secondary data with respect to earth temperature.

  2. The University of Alabama–Huntsville (UAH) collects satellite microwave data from NOAA satellites, which is interpreted in a manner similar to RSS data. The UAH data are also secondary. The UAH also has cross-checked its data against ground data and found a strong correlation. (Is the UAH data from a different set of satellites than the RSS data?)

  3. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) collects ground based temperature data from 1000-2000(?) land and sea(?) based climate stations. This is primary data.

Questions:

  • What other groups and/or data collection devices are being used? I realize the answers to this question are myriad but all (accurate) information is appreciated.

  • Can anyone shed more light or detail on these data and how they are collected, and the degree of transparency that exists within the organizations modeling the data? E.g., I understand that sometimes processing is done on the data to ameliorate the effect of inconsistencies in the collection process, such as an orbital satellite moving closer to the ground. Do these groups release “raw” data as well as “corrected” data, and/or do they explain all their corrections?

  • Am I drawing a useless or false dichotomy between “primary” measurements of actual temperature and secondary measurements?

see also

Thanks!

2

All right so this isn’t sexy, but surely someone out there knows more about temperature data / “climate change” data than I do. Anyone?

3

Hadley centre maintains the HadCRUT dataset

There’s an excellent interface at KNMI for a host of data.

There’s a searchable dataset at CO2Science

GISS station data is available here.

Don’t forget http://climateaudit.org and http://wattsupwiththat.com/

Look around at those two sites for a number of discussions of the GISS, HadCRUT, UAH, RSS, and other datasets.

HTH