Seeing the Wood for Trees

Welcome to WoodForTrees.org. This site hosts some C++ software tools for analysis and graphing of time series data, and an interactive graph generator where you can play with different ways of analysing data.

Climate data

These tools could in theory be used for any time series but the main rationale for their existence is for analysis of historical climate data. The idea is to allow you to go to the source data and look for answers to questions like:

  • Has the Earth got warmer recently?
  • Is it still getting warmer?
  • Is CO2 the only explanation for what has happened?
  • Are there solar cycles involved?
  • Are there other influences we don't understand yet?
  • If so, how much do they account for?
  • What is likely to happen next?

It's not the place of this Web site (or anyone else) to tell you the answers, even if I could! This is just a tool to help you dig into the data to help you form your own opinions. Whatever you decide the most important thing is that you learned what the issues in analysis are and how to test your ideas against real data.

About this site

This website is a self-funded personal project by Paul Clark, a British software developer and practically-oriented environmentalist and conservationist.

Please note:

I have no particular axe to grind in the "Global Warming Debate" one way or the other. Indeed, as a life-long Green I think a shift to a efficient and sustainable way of life is a Good Thing whether or not CO2 is a significant problem in and of itself.

My aim here is only to use what skills I have as a programmer to help others with greater domain knowledge to discover and debate what is happening. No angle, no hidden agenda.

After 25 years of messing around with (and being messed around by) computers and complex software, I would just say this:

Computers are great tools for helping you think; just never rely on them to do the thinking for you.


How you can help

I welcome constructive suggestions of new algorithms or datasets I could add, and in particular help from experts if I've got any of the maths badly wrong (which is quite possible).

Mail me at 'paul' at this domain. Flames will be silently extinguished.

Graph of the month

30 years of comparable temperature data

29th January 2009:

With the release of the UAH and RSS data for December/January we now have 30 years of satellite temperature data. This also means that our composite WoodForTrees Temperature Index (WTI) now spans 30 years as well.

Here's the full range of WTI, together with its trendline (currently 0.15°C/decade):

30+ year WTI with trendline

Having a 30-year trend is probably better than not having one, but bear in mind that a linear trend can't show accelerating changes, nor oscillations longer than the trend period.

Ancient History

Following the trends

14th July 2008:

I've had a lot of requests for trend lines on the graphs, and I'm happy to oblige... However, I would just like to note the dangers of 'cherry-picking' particular periods - here are four different trend-lines you can get from the same data (UAH temperature) just by choosing your periods carefully:

UAH temperature data with four different trendlines.

Read more thoughts on the uses and abuses of trend lines