Detecting climate variations and change: new challenges for observing and data management systems

Abstract

Several essential aspects of weather observing and the management of weather data are discussed as related to improving knowledge of climate variations and change in the surface boundary layer and the resultant consequences for socioeconomic and biogeophysical systems. The issues include long-term homogeneous time series of routine weather observations; time- and space-scale resolution of datasets derived from the observations; information about observing systems, data collection systems, and data reduction algorithms; and the enhancement of weather observing systems to serve as climate observing systems. Overall, a call is made for improvements in routine weather observing, data management, and analysis systems. Routine observations have provided (and will continue to provide) most of the information regarding how the climate has changed during the last 100 years affecting where we live, work, and grow our food. -from Authors