Climate data guide spurs discovery and understanding

Highly accurate and stable observations -- beyond those provided by routine weather monitoring -- are essential for understanding the behavior of the climate system, developing and validating Earth system models, and attributing extreme weather events and long-term trends to causes [National Research Council, 2012; Trenberth et al., 2013]. In parallel with an exploding volume of climate data, ready access to data in user-friendly formats is important to an expanding number and increasing diversity of individuals worldwide across public, private, and academic sectors [Overpeck et al., 2011].