System of information in NOPEX — retrieval, use, and query of climate data
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文摘
The uncertainty in climate predictions caused by improper understanding of the role of the land-surface is underestimated and easy access to data from a series of landscape types around the globe would improve this. Such data exist from a series of large-scale land-surface experiments but access to them has been difficult. It is the objective of this paper to demonstrate how the System for Information in NOPEX (SINOP) could be set up to provide a combination of data archive and tool for executing various time-limited and long-term field activities. Setting up and running SINOP involved both technical and psychological issues. The major technical problems were associated with (i) the uninterrupted flow of large data volumes, (ii) data homogeneity, and (iii) the exploding technology development. The psychological and organisational problems were more difficult to tackle than the technical problems. Funding agencies assumed somebody else would take care of data archiving and documentation, academic organisations have difficulties to compete with the private market for database managers, many individual scientists were unwilling to deliver their datasets and, especially, unwilling to document them. It is suggested that changes in attitudes from scientists, academic organisations, and publishers are needed to give credit for the publication of good datasets and for the production of good documentation about them. CDs incorporating a subset of SINOP with well-documented datasets from NOPEX operations in 1994 and 1995 are published together with this NOPEX Special Issue. The CDs include climate variables, such as radiation, fluxes of heat, momentum, and water vapour, and various energy storage terms as well as hydrological variables from 13 sites within the central-Swedish NOPEX region, at the southern boundary of the boreal zone. The publication of these data is seen as a step towards giving data-set owners proper and citeable credit for their work.