Climate Data
Format
Scientists are interested in the Earth's temperature change since the last
glacial maximum, about 20,000 years ago. The first study to estimate the
temperature change was published in 1980, and estimated a change of -1.5 degrees
C, +/- 1.2 degrees C in tropical sea surface temperatures.
The negative value means that the Earth was colder then than now.
Since 1980 there have been many other studies.
climate is a dataset with 63 measurements on 5 variables:
- sdev
a standard deviation for the calculated deltaT;
- proxy
a number 1-8 reflecting which type of measurement system was used to derive deltaT. Some proxies can be used over land, others over water. The proxies are coded as
1 "Mg/Ca"
2 "alkenone"
3 "Faunal"
4 "Sr/Ca"
5 "del 180"
6 "Ice Core"
7 "Pollen"
8 "Noble Gas"- T/M
, an indicator of whether it was a terrestrial or marine study (T/M), which is coded as 0 for Terrestrial, 1 for Marine;
- latitude
the latitude where the data were collected.