News Archive
February 2000

The new publication, 1999 Newly Available Agency Data Sets that are significantly Global Change Related, provides a comprehensive list of global change-related data sets made available during 1999 from federal agencies. The third in a series of yearly publications, this catalog represents an important step in the interagency process of making data and information from the U.S. Global Change Research Program available to researchers, the commercial world, policy makers, and the public.

Global surface temperatures in 1999 fell back from the record setting high level of 1998, which was the warmest year in the period of instrumental data, report researchers at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies who analyze data collected from several thousand meteorological stations around the world. But 1999 was still one of the warmest years of the century, according to a new report at NASA's Earth Observatory.

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La Niña Watch
La Niña's Persistence May Be Part of Larger Climate Pattern
A giant horseshoe pattern of higher than normal sea-surface heights developing over the last year is beginning to dominate the entire western Pacific and Asiatic oceans, new imagery from the U.S.-French TOPEX/Poseidon satellite shows. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, studying the new data believe these abnormally warm ocean temperatures, which contrast with a cool La Niña, may be part of a larger, longer-lasting climate pattern. The latest data show that this slower-developing condition covers most of the Pacific Ocean and has significant implications for global climate change, especially over North America, said Dr. William Patzert, an oceanographer at JPL. Satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration clearly illustrate the pattern. Sea-surface temperatures, which directly affect the atmosphere on a daily basis, and show the same warm and cool water patterns.

global change data
CDIAC's Trends Online Now Includes Historical Isotopic Temperature Record from the Vostok Ice Core
Because isotopic fractions of oxygen-18 and deuterium in snowfall are temperature dependent, it is possible to derive ice-core climate records from the isotopic composition. The U.S. Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) has released an isotopic temperature record from the Vostok ice core. This record is based on the 3623-m ice core drilled at the Vostok station in central east Antarctica, the deepest ice core ever recovered. The resulting core allows the ice core record of climate properties at Vostok to be extended to 420,000 years BP (before present). The overall amplitude of the glacial-interglacial temperature change is ~8°C for the temperature above the inversion level and ~12°C for surface temperatures.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed new national maps of vegetation ecoregions at a resolution of 1 square kilometer. Using a parallel supercomputer and an empirical technique called Multivariate Geographic Clustering--along with high-resolution data about soils, elevation, and climate--the scientists have produced, in an objective fashion, maps of the conterminous United States thought to capture the ecological patterns of spatial variance relevant for the distribution and growth of vegetation. Multivariate Geographic Clustering transforms data from each map cell into an N-dimensional data space where it then groups each cell into bins of cells with similar values for each data variable. Finally, a new map is created in which every cell is colored by its bin assignment. The technique also serves as an analytical tool for predicting changes in a species' geographic distribution as a result of global change. The resulting maps and underlying data layers are available on the WWW.

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Climate Change Called 'Our Greatest Challenge'
World leaders put climate change at the top of the list of challenges for the future
World business and government leaders, gathered at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, say that climate change is our greatest challenge. The verdict was reached after five of the world's leading thinkers presented their visions for the future and the participants registered their responses by electronic voting. Not only did the audience choose climate change as the world's most pressing problem, they also voted it as the issue where business could most effectively adopt a leadership role.

global change data
New Results Show Which Way the Wind Blows Over the Oceans
NASA "opening the tap" on data from spaceborne radar instrument
Scientists, weather forecasters and the public take possession of a valuable stream of meteorological and climate observations, as the first calibrated measurements from NASA's SeaWinds instrument on the QuikSCAT satellite become available. "We're opening the tap on this global data to the world," said Dr. Michael Freilich, principal investigator on SeaWinds and a professor at Oregon State University, Corvallis. "SeaWinds measurements of the direction and strength of the winds at the ocean surface give us new knowledge that, in combination with satellite measurements of clouds, temperature and other data, can be used for understanding how different weather systems and storms develop, and for predicting weather over the entire globe," Freilich said. The measurements, he added, also are crucial for understanding ocean currents, climate patterns, and the cyclical and anomalous variations that occur in those patterns. Access to daily wind data and animations from the ocean-wind tracker is available from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

grants & contracts
FGDC Offers Grants for Mapping Projects
The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) has announced the opening date for applications under the FGDC National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Partnership Funding Programs for Fiscal Year 2000. The purpose of the grant program is to encourage partnerships, alliances, and sharing of technology relating to spatial data. For FY 2000, the program is focusing on metadata collection and publication, building community awareness, and testing web-based mapping projects. For more information, see FGDC's NSDI 2000 Cooperative Agreements Program Announcement webpage.

Conference Announcement/Call for Papers
Data for Science and Society
In conjunction with several federal science agencies, the U.S. National Committee for CODATA is organizing the second national data conference (March 13-14, 2000) to address important multidisciplinary issues in managing and using scientific and technical (S&T) data, and to improve the visibility of those issues nationally. The main focus will be to promote the availability and usefulness of S&T data to all users, both in research and in the broader society, using examples of ground-breaking and innovative applications and highly creative partnerships.

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