Environmental Data Rescue Article Index for
Environmental
Website Links For
Environmental Data
 

Information About

Environmental Data Rescue




Environmental data rescue is a collection of processes, including photography and scanning, that stores historical and modern environmental data in a usable format. The data is then analyzed and used in scientific models. Historical weather information helps meteorologists and climatologists understand past trends in weather changes, which helps them forecast and predict future weather.

One method takes digital photographs of environmental datum stored on paper medium and then ships the images to a facility where they are entered into a database.

Throughout the world, some estimate 700,000 pieces of data are lost every day due to inks fading, paper deteriorating, magnetic tape cross-talk etc. There is a rough estimate of 100 billion parameter values that are still on paper, microfiche, microfilm, and magnetic tape that in a format unusable by computers and scientists alike need to be digitized. This data is stored on a variety of media from paper, microfiche, to older Magnetic tapes that are going bad.

Once data is digitized, it can be used to help a large range of people from farmers to engineers and in scientific pursuits such as climate studies.

National Climatic Data Center is the current collection point for this data within the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration {Link without Title}