Conservation Group, Universities Unveil Climate Change Web Tool

A web tool for projecting past and future temperature of specific areas of the world was unveiled Friday for use by climate experts and the general public.

The tool called ClimateWizard uses computer programming methods, geographic information systems (GIS) and cutting-edge Internet technologies to analyze large databases of climate models located remotely on computer servers, according to the University of Washington (UW), one of the partners that developed the online program. Aside from UW’s Evan Givetz, Chris Zganjar from The Nature Consevancy and George Raber from the University of Southern Mississippi developed the tool freely available at www.ClimateWizard.org.

Users input annual, seasonal or monthly temperatures and precipitation in any given area from 1901 to 2099 to get the results in map format with shades of colors indicating temperature levels.

The maps can be downloaded as graphics files for use in presentations, reports, and publications. Tables, graphs and GIS layers summarizing the climate-change results for each analysis area can also be produced and downloaded for use in environmental and ecological research, management, planning, policy, and advocacy.

Jon Hoekstra, climate-change-program director at the Nature Conservancy, citing the usefulness of ClimateWizard, told Seattletimes.nwsource.com, “We needed a tool that could bring that data to the desktops of people who can use it.”

via All Headline News

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