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Capacity of U.S. Climate Modeling to Support Climate Change Assessment Activities (1998)

Chapter: Appendix D - Examples of Access Restrictions on Foreign Atmospheric Data

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix D - Examples of Access Restrictions on Foreign Atmospheric Data." National Research Council. 1998. Capacity of U.S. Climate Modeling to Support Climate Change Assessment Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6365.
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Page 45

Appendix D
Examples of Access Restrictions on Foreign Atmospheric Data.

1. Real-time access to weather and seasonal-to-interannual climate forecasts from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting is restricted. The U.S. National Weather Service and certain climate research centers (e.g., IRI) can obtain access to these data through institutional agreements, however real-time access by individual U.S. researchers is generally denied. U.S. commercial interests are also denied real-time access to these data.

2. The U.K. Meteorological Office (UKMO) maintains a data base of climate data at:

http://www.meto.gov.uk/sec5/CR_div/index_climate.html.

Access to these data is only possible through individual agreements with the UKMO and access is not guaranteed if the data are to be used for commercial or business purposes.

3. The Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis makes its model output available to the research community. However, access to these data is not readily available if the data are to be used “as a part of, or as the basis of a data base, product, or service

Suggested Citation:"Appendix D - Examples of Access Restrictions on Foreign Atmospheric Data." National Research Council. 1998. Capacity of U.S. Climate Modeling to Support Climate Change Assessment Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6365.
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Page 46

for access or distribution outside of [an] organization, or for commercial sale.”

4. The IPCC Data Distribution Centre does not allow commercial use of its data. (see, e.g., http://ipcc-ddc.cru.uea.ac.uk/)

5.

Memorandum

FROM:

Elbert W. Friday, Jr., Permanent Representative of the United States to the WMO (1988 – 1998)

TO:

Tom Karl

DATE:

July 2, 1998

RE:

Limitations on International Exchange of Climate Model Output

Over the past ten years, most of the governments of Western Europe have moved from taxpayer-funded meteorological services to ones that are increasingly being asked to recover a substantial portion of their costs of operation. This has given rise to some degree of conflict in the field of international meteorology where data and products, once eagerly exchanged without restrictions, now have intrinsic economic value. We are seeing increasing reluctance on the part of several meteorological services to provide data and products without restrictions being placed on their use or redistribution.

In 1995, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) passed a resolution (Res 40, Congress XII) that tried to continue the free and unrestricted exchange of environmental data and products. This resolution recognized that some services may be required to place certain restrictions on their products and established the conditions for data distribution among countries.

During the discussions leading up to the resolution, the Director of the British Met Office, Prof. Julian Hunt, stated that he did not intend to make any of his climate projections publicly available as they were too valuable commercially to give away. This practice could have the impact of denying US economic interests the latest in climate forecasting capabilities if the US capability falls behind that of other countries.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix D - Examples of Access Restrictions on Foreign Atmospheric Data." National Research Council. 1998. Capacity of U.S. Climate Modeling to Support Climate Change Assessment Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6365.
×
Page 45
Suggested Citation:"Appendix D - Examples of Access Restrictions on Foreign Atmospheric Data." National Research Council. 1998. Capacity of U.S. Climate Modeling to Support Climate Change Assessment Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6365.
×
Page 46
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The U.S. government has pending before it the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), which is largely based on the threat GHGs pose to the global climate. Such an agreement would have significant economic and national security implications, and therefore any national policy decisions regarding this issue should rely in part on the best possible suite of scenarios from climate models.

The U.S. climate modeling research community is a world leader in intermediate and smaller climate modeling efforts-research that has been instrumental in improving the understanding of specific components of the climate system. Somewhat in contrast, the United States has been less prominent in producing high-end climate modeling results, which have been featured in recent international assessments of the impacts of climate change. The fact that U.S. contributions of these state-of-the-art results have been relatively sparse has prompted a number of prominent climate researchers to question the current organization and support of climate modeling research in the United States, and has led ultimately to this report.

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