Databank Teleconference

Thanks to everyone who was able to call in Thursday. It was a productive hour and 20 minutes. There are 11 action items that we will post as part of the summary notes from the call. Look for them in your e-mail later today and posted online early next week - to surfacetemperatures.org/databank.

Data rescue task team minutes posted

The latest meeting of the data rescue task team took place last week. Minutes have been posted here.

Main surfacetemperatures.org site changes

I have tried to make better cross-link and information content in the databank area of the surfacetemperatures.org site following critical feedback from external parties. I'd be interested in thoughts good, bad or ugly and suggestions for missing links and things we could improve. Maybe a topic for the next telecon?

Welcome to the Databank working group

As Chair of the Databank working group I welcome you to our new blog. This provides a venue for sharing ideas associated with development of the global surface databank. Our near-term focus is on establishing a databank of surface temperature data at daily and monthly timescales. Longer term we intend to expand this to include sub-daily observations of temperature and other variables. A pilot temperature databank of several sources is available at http://www.gosic.org/GLOBAL_SURFACE_DATABANK/GBD.html . Suggestions regarding new data sources, formatting, and access are welcome and encouraged. This working group is supported by a task team on data rescue and another on data provenance and version control.

Data sources

We welcome suggestions as to possible data sources both in digital format and also image only or hardcopy only. Please feel free to make suggestions in the comments. Sources must be available for usage without restriction to be incorporated within the databank and ideally have a provenance trail - where possible back to the original measurement through an unbroken chain.

Blog rationale

This is a blog to discuss work in progress towards a global surface databank of historical meteorological observations. It is intended for discussion primarily by working group members. Public comments are permitted but are moderated and moderation will not be instantaneous.