BALTEX

The Baltic Sea Experiment

Home / News
Background
BALTEX Phase I
BALTEX Phase II
Projects
Data Management
Publications
Organisation
International BALTEX Secretariat
Events
Links
Internal
How to participate

Baltic Earth

7th Study Conference
on BALTEX
Ă–land, Sweden
10 - 14 June 2013

Conference on Climate Change in the Southern Baltic region
Szczecin, 12-15 May 2014

21st Century Challenges in Regional Climate Modelling
Lund, 16-19 June 2014

BACC II
Baltic-C
Ecosupport
AMBER

BALTEX Data Management

Data relevant to BALTEX cover a wide range of disciplines, data types, periods, geographical extent, frequency and spatial resolution. Various institutions and agencies in numerous countries hold different types of data which are required for research purposes in BALTEX. For example, some observational data are collected operationally by national hydro-meteorological services and agencies of at least 10 different countries in the Baltic Sea drainage basin; some environmental data as well as modelling data (re-analyses and climate projections) are stored on servers of research institutes.

A. BALTEX Data Centres (BALTEX Phase I Data)

Four BALTEX Data Centres for meteorology, hydrology, oceanography and for radar data were installed during BALTEX Phase I by the Science Steering Group with the main objective to concentrate specific types of data or information (metadata) at these centres, and thus to facilitate the data exchange between the different data suppliers on the one side and individual scientists or research groups within BALTEX on the other side. Currently, the data delivery to the BALTEX Data Centres has ceased, but historical data are available anytime.

At the 26th BALTEX Science Steering Group meeting on 25 November 2010 in Gothenburg, a facilitated access procedure to BALTEX data from the BALTEX Data Centres was approved. For easier access, the procedure was decentralised. Data access will now be given directly by the data archives which host BALTEX relevant data. The access is free for academic use and thus also for BALTEX related research.

With this new procedure, it is no longer necessary to fill in a form and contact a BALTEX Science Steering Group member for approval. Now researchers interested in the BALTEX data available at the above specified data centres should directly approach the managers of these data centres, who will grant permissions according to the conditions and access restrictions of these centres. In order to get access to the data, the request is directed to the respective data centre by e-mail (with copy to baltex@hzg.de), specifying the affiliation of the data user and a short description of the research project for which the requested data will be used for. Based on this information, the data centres decide on the release of the data. This is necessary to warrant that the data are only used for research purposes. BALTEX data users shall properly acknowledge and make reference to the origin of BALTEX data, whenever the latter are used for publication of scientific results. A minimum requirement is to reference the BALTEX programme and the respective BALTEX data centre. For details see the BALTEX Data Management web site (see below), and the conditions of the respective data centres.

How to get access in short:

  1. Identify the data centre which holds the data you are interested in.
  2. Send your request by e-mail to the data manager of that centre (in copy to the International BALTEX Secretariat: baltex@hzg.de), specifying your name and affiliation and a short description of the research project for which the requested data will be used for
  3. The data centres will decide on the release of the data according to this information and the conditions and restrictions of these centres.

Please read and acknowledge the General BALTEX Data Exchange Policy (here). For availability and access to data please contact the respective BALTEX Data Centres directly:

B. Distributed BALTEX relevant data bases

Other BALTEX relevant data are distributed at institutions all over the BALTEX region and beyond. Access to these data is subject to the individual data policies of the respective institutions, but access is generally free and usually involves little administrative effort. A list of distributed BALTEX relevant data bases is available here. In case that relevant data sources are missing in the BALTEX data archive catalogue, please feel free to send a message to the International BALTEX Secretariat (baltex@hzg.de), referencing the URL and a short description of the archive in order to complete the BALTEX data archive catalogue.

Related links

General BALTEX Data Exchange Policy
More...

Distributed BALTEX relevant Data Centres
More...
BALTEX Working Group on Data Management
More...


Home | Contact | Sitemap | Site Info
Last update of this page: 11 April 2011