Data Policy
Data associated with the GAW programme, i.e. manually quality assured data reported to WDCA on an annual basis, underlies the following data policy:
“For scientific purposes, access to GAW WDCA data is unlimited and provided without charge. By their use you accept that an offer of co-authorship will be made through personal contact with the data providers or owners whenever substantial use is made of their data. In all cases, an acknowledgment must be made to the data providers or owners and to the data centre when these data are used within a publication.”
Browsing and Obtaining Data
The GAW World Data Centre for Aerosol is hosted by the EBAS database, originally established for the UN Convention for Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP). The web-interface is accessible at:
http://ebas.nilu.no
The web-interface allows to search for data geographically, by measured parameter, or by project association. Datasets may be listed, graphically displayed, or downloaded in NASA-Ames format.
The data reported to WDCA are identified in the database by the associations GAW-WDCA (for regularly, annually reported data) and GAW-WDCA_NRT (for data reported in near-real-time).
Data Policy for Near-Real-Time Data
Data delivery on a near-real-time (NRT) schedule is a WMO-GAW pilot project. Near-real-time aerosol data are raw, automatically processed data that have not passed through any review by aerosol scientists. They are intended for applications where gaps and glitches in the data are expected and accepted, for example, assimilation by air quality forecast models. Near-real-time data should not be used in lieu of final, “clean”, regularly reported data, and the data providers expressly deny permission for users to publish near-real-time data. Access to WDCA NRT data requires a registration and the user’s consent not to distribute or publish data without agreement of data provider. In the pilot project phase, requests for registration will be evaluated by the GAW Scientific Advisory Group for aerosol. Contact between data users and providers is strongly encouraged. Data providers are very interested in learning about how the data are being used. To obtain access to WDCA NRT data, please send a request to ebas@nilu.no.