GLOBE News
GLOBE Community: Data Visualization System – Visualizing Made Easy!
Tip of the Week: Did you know that GLOBE provides the ability to view and interact (visualize) with data around the world? You can select the visualization tool to map, graph, filter and export data that have been measured across GLOBE protocols since 1995. Currently, the GLOBE Data Visualization Tool supports a subset of protocols.
To start, select the “Visualize Data” on the GLOBE homepage – and then explore at will. You can also compare your measurements to satellite measurements (by simply following the prompts and selecting “Choose base map”).
Long-term Data
Long-term air temperature and precipitation data from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) version 3 dataset (air temperature) and version 2 dataset (precipitation) are managed by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). (More information about this dataset is available through NCDC at: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ghcnm).
This data is provided as a Google Earth KML file, which displays reporting stations of long-term air temperature and precipitation data from the NCDC. (Download the KML data and use Google Earth to locate a long-term data record.)
From the popup balloons for each city within Google Earth you can download and view the long-term air temperature and precipitation data record in CSV (comma separated value) format for use in a spreadsheet program. (The data are available in monthly or yearly intervals, so if you choose to calculate the yearly averages, you will want to download monthly data to start. Regional averages can be performed on either the monthly or yearly data.)
For guidance refer to the Google Earth Instruction Guide for more detailed instructions on using Google Earth and the Viewing Long-term Air Temperature and Precipitation Data Guide for more information about the data format.
Additional features and capabilities are always being added, so check back often. For tutorials on using the Visualization System, click here (pdf version) or click here (PowerPoint version).
If you have questions about this effort, send us an email at help@globe.gov.
type: globe-newsNews origin: GLOBE Implementation Office