This is the obsolete ClimateBook site. I have left it up temporarily because it has a few resources that may be of archival value. Note that the courseware here is not current, and does not have all the bug fixes of the current release. Courseware should be gotten from the current site. Links to the coursware (except for the pre-built Power PC software) have been deleted to avoid inadvertent use of obsolete courseware. The current climate book site is here.
For general help in setting up a Python installation suitable for use in conjunction with the exercises, see the Python Resource page. There, you will also find links to Python language references and tutorials. For an overview of how to set up the courseware and data on a server or individual computer, once you have performed a basic Python installation, look here.
Some resources
Data sets used in exercises:
- tarfile of all datasets
- Individual chapter datasets, with description
Complete prepackaged installations:
The following tar files contain a complete Python environment with all modules needed to run the courseware,plus all the standard shared course modules. These distributions do not contain the datasets, or the "Chapter Scripts" which generate the figures in each chapter and offer additional illustrations of the phenomena. (The distribution contains the cdms data analysis package, but does not presently contain the ClimT radiation package; the next release will include ClimT). To use the distribution, just download the tarfile to any place you want, untar it (using tar xf ClimateBookSoftware.tar ; depending on your browser setup, this may happen automatically without your having to do anything), which will create a folder called ClimateBookSoftware. Just follow the directions in the README file, and put the contents of this folder where they belong, and you're ready to go. Note, that some of the contents need to go at the top level directory of your disk drive, and you will probably need to have admin privileges on your computer to put them there. Note that these builds do not currently have the most recent version of utility scripts (phys.py, etc.) in them. You can always download the latest version of the utilitiy scripts and put them in your modules directory by hand, after downloading the complete build.
General utility software:
- tarfile of all software
- ClimateUtilities.py (General data manipulation,plotting, and mathematical functions) Updated 2/7/2007.Now includes numerical quadrature, and improved user interface for ODE integration routines (integrand functions and deriv functions no longer have to include a parameter argument if it's not needed).. Updated 11/6/2007 (added interpolation class)
- phys.py (Handbook of physical constants and functions) Updated 11/6/2007 (fixed erroneous liquid density values in gas table; added MoistAdiabat class for computing moist adiabats for binary condensing/noncondensing mixtures)
- planets.py (Handbook of data on Solar System objects) Updated 11/20/2006
- Solar.py (Functions for computing distribution of incident solar radiation over a planet's surface)
Advanced modelling and data analysis software:
- cdms --Used for reading and writing netCDF data files
- ClimT -- A Python toolkit for building climate models. In the book, this is used primarily to provide a simple way of making use of comprehensive atmospheric radiation models.
- ClimTLite--A simplified installation which provides access to radiation models only, without the more general features of the modelling system
- Other packages of possible interest:
- SciPy -- An alternative to cdms for handling netCDF files. Also offers good graphics support which can be used instead of the Ngl-based graphics that are built into ClimateUtilities by default.
- MatPlotLib -- Matlab-like plotting for Python
Chapter Scripts
- tarfile of all chapter scripts
- Chapter 1 Scripts (The Big Questions)
- Chapter 2 Scripts (Thermodynamics)
- Chapter 3 Scripts (Elementary Radiation Balance)
- Chapter 4 Scripts (IR Radiation for Stratified Atmospheres)
- Chapter 6 Scripts (Surface Energy Budget)
- Chapter 7 Scripts (Seasonal Cycle)
Useful links
- Planetary Data
- NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS) is the general repository for data from space missions. It offers powerful search options, but it is not convenient if you need to download a very large number of files from a given mission. The Magellan Venus Radio Occultation profiles can be found at PDS, but the Pioneer Venus soundings seem to be missing.. The Cassini/Huygens mission data can also be conveniently downloaded from PDS, including the lander temperature profile.
- A very convenient archive of the Mars Global Surveyor Radio Occultation temperature profiiles can be found here
- Earth Data
- A wealth of Earth observations can be found at Lamont's Ingrid database
- Station data
- CARDS sounding database
- GHCN Surface Station Data
- Gridded data
- Daily and monthly mean gridded surface and upper air data from the NCEP reanalysis can be obtained conveniently from the NOAA Climate Analysis Branch (www.cdc,noaa.gov)
- National Climate Data Center (ncdc) is a good portal to both gridded and station datasets, though some of it costs money
- Paleoclimate data
- National Climate Data Center (ncdc) is also the best place to find ice-core data such as the Vostok Antarctic temperature and CO2 record, as well as a good variety of marine sediment core data.
- Atmospheric composition
- The Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center (CDIAC) has a wealth of information on recent and past CO2 fluctuations and emissions
- Energy and Carbon Emissions
- US Energy Information Agency (EIA)
- Spectroscopy, and optical properties of condensed substances
- The HITRAN spectroscopic database can be obtained here
- The HITEMP Venus extension of the CO2 data can be found here
- Index of refraction of sulfuric acid and nitric acid aerosols here
- Polarizability and index of refraction of gases here
- Optical properties of liquid water and water ice
- Optical properties of CO2 ice
- Icarus publishes a lot of the spectroscopic data that is of interest primarily to the planetary sciences community. More general spectroscopic information is usually found in the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer. See especially their special issue on planetary sciences [**DATE]. Other useful data can be found through the Optical Society of America Optics Infobase [**LINK].
- Properties of atmospheric gases and their condensates
- The first place to look is the NIST web handbook, which contains a great deal of information about the more common gases. It even includes such things as the Shomate coefficients giving the dependence of specific heat on temperature, and equations giving the dependence of saturation vapor pressure on temperature incorporating the variation of latent heat (the Antoine equation coefficients). It is missing a lot of information one would like to know, however, such as triple-point densities of solid forms or specific heats of some condensed forms, though these are available for selected gases. Most of the data for the thermodynamic table in Chapter 2, and the extended data table available in the gas database in phys.py, came from this site or the Air Liquide site listed below. More exotic information (solid oxygen properties, triple point densitites of many ices, condensed phase information for H2 and He) came from the specialist literature. Information on planetary ices is often published in Icarus , and the Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data is also a good place to look.
- Another good source of thermodynamic data is the Air Liquide site, by one of the major manufacturers of industrial gases