As defined by a US National Research Council committee, a Climate Data Record (CDR) is "a time series of measurements of sufficient length, consistency and continuity to determine climate variability and change." In the US, agencies such as NASA and NOAA have sponsored operational and grant programs to create and curate CDRs. The focus has been on the reprocessing of satellite-derived records. The NOAA program includes a "research to operations" initiative to transfer the development of routine and widely used data records from an individual PI's research group to an operational NOAA center. NASA also uses the broader term "Earth Science Data Records (ESDR)," which includes CDRs and is described by NASA as "a unified and coherent set of observations of a given parameter of the Earth system, which is optimized to meet specific requirements in addressing science questions."
The European Space Agency (ESA) has also launched an initiative to provide satellite based CDRs (Hollmann et al, 2013).
To find Climate Data Records or learn more, see the Climate Data Records collection on the Climate Data Guide, browse the links under Data Access, or visit the NOAA or NASA pages linked at right under Product Websites.
National Center for Atmospheric Research Staff (Eds). Last modified 02 Jan 2014. "The Climate Data Guide: Climate Data Records: Overview." Retrieved from https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/climate-data-records-overview.
Funding: NSF | National Science Foundation
Based at: NCAR | National Center for Atmospheric Research
A Project of: Climate Analysis Section in Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory
Created by: Climate Data Guide PIs and Staff