Catching up with some of the stuff that got lost in the Copenhagen hubbub, this morning I stumbled on a major new effort to provide interactive climate data and visualisations — the Climate Wizard. This amazing tool is the web front end to a collection of temperature and precipitation data and model projections, and allows the user to create custom maps of climate change over the last fifty years, and projections for the 2050s and 2080s for three IPCC scenarios across 16 models. It provides state-level detail for the USA, but coarser regional and global maps for the rest of the world. It can also create ensembles of model projections on the fly:
[Lead author] Girvetz recommends using one of the newest features added to the program, the ability to create an ensemble of some or all of the 16 models. Want to average the temperatures of, say, the 12 climate models that forecast the largest temperature increases? Climate Wizard can do so almost instantaneously. [Source]
The background to the Wizard (a joint effort of the University of Washington, University of Southern Mississippi and The Nature Conservancy) is described in this PLoS One paper.
Apart from being a very interesting way of looking into temperature data and projections, it is also a tool set that can be extended by the addition of extra data: the authors suggest they could include “simulations of global vegetation, fire, water runoff, species range shifts, agriculture, sea level rise, heat stroke, disease, and food security.” They also suggest that the Climate Wizard could provide a basis for web “mash-ups” with services like Google Earth/Maps to help with public education on climate change. Highly recommended.
Related posts:
- New dimensions in earth science uncovered by NZ blogger
- Spinning wheel…
- Arctic sea ice melting faster than expected
- Float on…
- Look out, here comes tomorrow
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Yeah, had a bit of a tutu. I was hopeful it would resolve a bit more detail, but I guess it will be refined as time goes by.
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A nice work of fiction, BTW, no mention of NZ in the scroll down.
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I contacted Evan Girvetz at Climate Wizard, and he tells me that the issue has now been fixed (I checked – it has). He also suggested that I have a play with the “future climate models and animations” linked above the main map. One app allows direct comparisons between model projections, with a drag and drop interface, the other animates maps of climate change over the next century. Very interesting (if a bit hidden!)…
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