Sources and References

Data sources used in the Actuaries Climate Index:

Drought, Temperature, & Precipitation

• Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) Daily, from the NOAA Satellite and Information Service, is an integrated database of daily climate summaries from land surface stations across the globe. The grids each cover a surface area of 2.5 degrees longitude by 2.5 degrees latitude.
• GHCNDEX is a dataset based on GHCN Daily. It provides gridded, station-based indices of temperature- and precipitation-related climate extremes and was developed by the Climate Change Research Centre and the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.
• CLIMDEX (Datasets for Indices of Extreme Weather) is developed and maintained by researchers at the Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC), The University of New South Wales (UNSW) and funded by the Australian Research Council and the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency through Linkage project LP100200690 and in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, Climate Research Division (Environment Canada) and NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (USA). See also: Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices at the World Meteorological Organization.

Sea Level

• Obtaining Tide Gauge Data from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level, which is based in Liverpool, UK, at theNational Oceanography Centre (NOC), and is a component of the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Wind

• The National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis data, done in conjunction with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), is provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Oceanic and Atmospheric Research/Earth System Research Laboratory Physical Sciences Division in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Other Climate Data

• U.S. National Weather Service (NOAA)
• Environment Canada

Relevant Papers

• Donat, M. G., et al. 2013. Global land-based datasets for monitoring climatic extremes. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, July, 997-1006, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00109.1.
• Hansen J., et al. 1998, A Common Sense Climate Index: Is Climate Changing Noticeably? PNAS, 95, 4113-4120.
• Peduzzi, P., et al. 2009, Assessing global exposure and vulnerability towards natural hazards: the Disaster Risk Index. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 9, 1149-1159.
• Solterra Solutions, Determining the Impact of Climate Change on Insurance Risk and the Global Community, Phase I: Key Climate Indicators, November 2012.