Data: The key to informed climate action
Data is key to climate action. It demonstrates beyond doubt that climate change and its impacts are real and happening now. As well as informing policy and decisions, reliable data helps combat fake news, misinformation and disinformation that are often used to push back against or delay climate action.
But that data doesn’t just belong to scientists and politicians. Anyone can access reliable climate data and get answers using open-source platforms and data sets. This promotes transparency, encourages scientific and social collaboration and provides valuable evidence for decision-making.
Transforming data into insights
The flow of data in climate change research involves several key steps to transform raw data into actionable insights:
Data collection and processing
Climate change research generates vast amounts of heterogeneous data from various sources, including:
- Satellite observations
- Ground-based monitoring stations
- Ocean sensors
- Climate models
This data is collected and processed using Big Data tools and techniques to handle the volume, velocity, and variety of information.
Data analysis and modeling
Once processed, the data undergoes analysis using various methods:
- Data analysis involving examining, interpreting, cleaning, transforming, migrating and modeling data to extract useful information
- Modeling to transform raw data into structural, often visual, representations that allow for the identification of patterns, similarities and trends
These techniques, among others, help researchers understand complex climate phenomena and make projections about future changes.
Integration and synthesis
To generate comprehensive insights, data from different disciplines and research areas are integrated:
- Synergies between diverse climate-related data are explored
- Interdisciplinary collaborations combine social and natural science perspectives
Translation into usable insights
The analyzed data is then translated into usable insights through:
- Reports like "10 New Insights in Climate Science" that distill key findings for policymakers and the public, Bloomberg’s Climate and Nature Solutions reports for investors or climate risk assessments for physical assets from Climate Insights
- Creation of closed- and open-access visualizations and datasets that make climate information accessible to the public and other stakeholders.
For example:
- The European Environment Agency Datahub: The EEA collects, quality-assures, and quality-checks data on a wide range of topics and legislation related to the environment, climate and sustainability. And it’s all available to download and explore in the Hub.
- The Copernicus Climate Pulse tool: This interactive web application makes climate monitoring more accessible to a broad audience with daily, real-time charts and maps of global surface air temperature and sea surface temperature, as well as an archive of past daily, monthly and annual maps.
- Copernicus Climate Atlas: This allows people to explore and analyse past and future climate monitoring and change information from observations, reanalysis and projections. This enables in-depth global and regional assessment of past climate trends and future changes for different periods, emissions scenarios or degrees of global warming.
Application to decision-making
Finally, these insights are applied to support decision-making:
- Informing climate policy negotiations at events like the Conference of the Parties (COP) for signatory nations to the Paris Agreement
- Guiding adaptation and mitigation strategies across various sectors
By following this data flow, climate change research projects can effectively translate complex scientific findings into practical insights that inform policy, planning and action on climate change.
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