EXAMPLES OF UNARCHIVED DATASETS AND REFERENCES

Policy statements

The US Global Change Research Program states the following policy on data access:

• "Full and open sharing of the full suite of global data sets for all
  global change researchers is a fundamental objective.
• Preservation of all data needed for long-term global change research is
  required. For each and every global change data parameter, there should be
  at least one explicitly designated archive. Procedures and criteria for
  setting priorities for data acquisition, retention, and purging should be
  developed by participating agencies, both nationally and internationally. A
  clearinghouse process should be established to prevent the purging and loss
  of important data sets. ...
• For those programs in which selected principal investigators have
  initial periods of exclusive data use, data should be made openly available
  as soon as they become widely useful. In each case, the funding agency
  should explicitly define the duration of any exclusive use period."

PAGES (Past Global Changes), the paleo-climate division of the IGBP (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme), states:

"PAGES supports the development and use of rules of good scientific practice
(ESF, 2000; Appendix A). These include:

  a.. making data and methods available for reproducibility of results,
  b.. making data behind any published graphic or figure publicly available
  c.. using data ethically, including proper citation."

The Committee on Geophysical and Environmental Data http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/exch/exch.html stated:

"International programs for global change research and environmental monitoring crucially depend on the principle of full and open exchange (i.e., data and information are made available without restriction, on a non-discriminatory basis, for no more than the cost of reproduction and distribution; see Attachment 1, OECD [1994]). Commonly, observations collected for a specific, narrow purpose have had unforeseen, yet crucial application to research activities of widely differing scope and magnitude. Since it is difficult to predict what data may be important for environmental issues in the future, as much data as possible must be made available to scientists."

Unarchived References in Major Multi-Proxy Studies

Once data is provided for use in multi-proxy datasets, which are then applied to climate change policy, it seems self-evident that both the compilations used for figures in those studies and the underlying datasets supporting the individual series used in the compilations are subject to public disclosure under the above policies.  Many of the "NA" series in the FTP compilations result from non-compliance, often by eminent figures. The following table is prepared on October 24, 2003 and will be updated.

MBH98

The compilation of 112 series used in MBH98 was not digitally archived. Indeed, its digital availability herein is the first such public availability. Further, 57 of the 112 series used in MBH98 could not be identified in any digital archive, as summarized below. 41 of the digitally unpublished series could not be located in a print publication either.

Bradley, Hughes and Diaz (2003)

23 series are used. The compilation used to create the figure is not archived. The following15 individual series used in the compilation are either not archived or incompletely archived.

Other multi-proxy studies will be considered in the future.