Annotating climate data with commentary

The huge amount of available climate data can be a headache for non-expert users. An EU initiative, CHARME, found order in the chaos by developing an online system that collects and shares user experiences and feedback on climate datasets and links it directly to the datasets themselves.

Climate Change and Environment

There is a need for climate data to be compiled and shared in a systematic way, with supporting information as to potential applications. This supporting information is known as metadata. The EU-funded CHARME (Characterisation of metadata to enable high-quality climate applications and services) project set out to create a system that allows users to view or create annotations (metadata) that describe that climate data and is directly to the dataset forever. CHARME allows users of climate data to see the feedback, comments and information that other users have added to climate datasets. It can provide links to citations and other descriptive information about data which users have provided. It also supports other tools allowing user comments on data to be displayed by time or region and to make comparisons between datasets. In addition, CHARME supports a faceted search tool to find information about climate datasets on categories such as data type, region, climatic/ atmospheric variable, time, or comment type. The CHARME system is enabled via a JavaScript plugin on the data-provider’s website. Clicking on the CHARME icon alongside the listed datasets allows users to see and add associated commentary linked to that particular dataset. The plugin links through to the central CHARME node at CEDA, UK. The commentary information is parsed and interrogated using Open Annotation standards. The CHARME system went live in December 2014, and is currently in place at 2 European climate data centres that supply user-relevant information to many individual data sets. One example is the CMSAF website. More centres are set to be added. CHARME enables scientists, businesses, data providers, whether expert or non-expert, to discover, understand and exploit the climate data they need and to assess how suitable it is for their intended use. It will also contribute to the broader field of climate services that allow for informed policymaking.