Numeric Data Package Research Articles

Institutions Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center

Since 1982, the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) has provided a wide variety of information concerning changes in greenhouse gases and climate. Established by the US DOE, its mission has broadened from providing information to researchers to fielding information requests from congressional staffers, industry managers, public school students, and science reporters. Interest in greenhouse warming has expanded the scope from biogeophysical considerations to include the human dimensions. The annual number of information requests handled by CDIAC grew from 1,000 in 1982 to more than 8,000 in 1991. The cornerstone of CDIAC is documenting and assuring the quality of data, which is handled by the data systems group. By late 1992, CDIAC had produced more than 40 numeric data packages (NDPs), which contain statistics concerning global change and documentation necessary to understand the data, such as methodology, data limitations, and graphics or other useful statistics.