GeoChange FAQ

This list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) carries no official sanction with USGS. It is a compilation of answers we have given to questions people have asked us.

Contents

• Global warming
• Acid Rain
• General WWW issues
• Oceanography
• Weather and climate data

So is it getting warmer or what?

The most authoritative report on this issue is Climate Change 1995: IPCC Second Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is part of the United Nations Environmental Programme. The IPCC has a large amount of information on their web site dealing with this topic.

Other good sources of information on global warming include:

U.S. EPA's Global Warming website

Woods Hole Research Center's Global Warming Page

Does the USGS monitor global warming?

Not specifically. Our charge is to understand characteristics of the earth, especially the earth's surface, that affect our Nation's land, water, and biological resources. That includes quite a bit of environmental monitoring but other agencies, especially NOAA and NASA, are specifically funded to monitor global temperature and atmospheric phenomena such as ozone concentrations. Our work at USGS in the Global Change and Climate History Program focuses on understanding the likely consequences of climate change, especially by studying how climate has changed in the past.

Does the USGS study acid rain?

The environmental effects of acid rain include the acidification of lakes and streams, damage to trees at high altitude, the acceleration of decay in buildings and poorer air quality. The USGS primarily studies these and other effects of acid rain, including accelerated erosion and weathering, and surface- and ground-water quality issues.

The U.S. EPA's Acid Rain Program has some good information on acid rain, including information on the sources and causes of acid rain, and acid rain emissions data for many states.

What are some good places to look for geoscience information?

Search engines such as Google can often return good information, but for scientific information there's no good substitute for human discovery and review. Especially of interest is the carefully-prepared work of Pierre Proud at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. The site is called Athena Earth Science Resources.

Where can I get current sea-surface temperature data?

The data on GeoChange are no newer than 1991. More comprehensive data are available at the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) at JPL in Pasadena. For specific data covering coastal areas, consult the NOAA CoastWatch Program or its data access system, the NOAA CoastWatch Product Search. Some overview information on CoastWatch is available here.

Where can I get more sea-surface temperature data?

The best place for this information is the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. This DAAC keeps and distributes all of the AVHRR-derived SST data collected as part of NASA's EOSDIS.

Subsets of the data are also available using a subsetting routine accessible on the WWW:

http://podaac-www.jpl.nasa.gov/mcsst

Where can I find the temperature or precipitation for YourCity, USA?

The best place for this sort of information is the National Climatic Data Center, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The NCDC is physically located in Asheville, North Carolina. Their web address is http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/. They have a wide variety of online data available for immediate download, and they also have more extensive data on media like CD-ROM and tape (you generally have to pay for the cost of the media for those).