{"id":4113,"date":"2021-04-22T08:35:57","date_gmt":"2021-04-22T12:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/loren\/?p=4113"},"modified":"2021-04-22T08:56:33","modified_gmt":"2021-04-22T12:56:33","slug":"climate-data-toolbox-understanding-our-changing-climate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/loren\/2021\/04\/22\/climate-data-toolbox-understanding-our-changing-climate\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Data Toolbox: Understanding Our Changing Climate"},"content":{"rendered":"
Today our guest blogger is Lisa Kempler, who works at MathWorks in Natick, Massachusetts. <\/span><\/div>
Lisa supports researchers and educators, frequently geoscientists, helping them build and host the tools that they need on their community portals, from toolboxes to data access APIs to curriculum materials.<\/span><\/div>
Table of Contents<\/span><\/div>
Introduction to the Climate Data Toolbox\r\n<\/span><\/a> <\/span>Documentation Quick Links\r\n<\/span><\/a>Example: Pacific Ocean Temperature Change Since 1950\r\n<\/span><\/a> <\/span>Loading the Data\r\n<\/span><\/a> <\/span>Quick-Look Statistics and Mapping \r\n<\/span><\/a> <\/span>Temperature Trend Analysis\r\n<\/span><\/a> <\/span>The Answer: Where is the Temperature Change Statistically Significant?\r\n<\/span><\/a>Additional Reading and References<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div>

Introduction to the Climate Data Toolbox<\/span><\/h2>
Happy Earth Day!<\/span><\/div>
In the spirit of learning about our climate dynamics, in this 2021 Earth Day blog post I introduce readers to the Climate Data Toolbox, a community-contributed toolbox freely <\/span>downloadable from MATLAB File Exchange<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/div>
Climate Data Toolbox was developed by <\/span>Chad Greene<\/span><\/a>, a postdoctoral research fellow at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and <\/span>Kelly Kearney<\/span><\/a>, a research scientist at University of Washington. <\/span><\/div>
The toolbox was inspired by one big idea: There are a common set of tasks related to data processing, analysis and visualization that Geoscience researchers and students working with climate data typically perform. Greene and coauthors make the case in their <\/span>paper published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems<\/span><\/a> <\/span>that having everyone who is tackling climate analysis separately recoding these same tasks is not a good use of time, for the individual or the collective, as it takes away from other more innovative climate work.<\/span> <\/span>Better to have a set of reusable, publicly shared functions for those repetitive tasks.<\/span><\/div>
Apparently, MATLAB users agree and are busy analyzing climate data. Climate Data Toolbox has been downloaded almost 5000 times since it was published in 2019! <\/span><\/div>

Documentation Quick Links<\/span><\/h3>
The toolbox covers a lot of ground, including resources to get new users up to speed. The <\/span>documentation for the toolbox<\/span><\/a> <\/span>covers <\/span><\/div>