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Best practices for reporting climate data in ecology

Nature Climate Change volume 8, pages 92–94 (2018)Cite this article

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A large number of published ecological studies fail to include basic information about the climate data used. In the interest of reproducibility and transparency, we offer recommendations for best practices that we urge Editors, authors, and reviewers to adopt in future publications.

Among ecologists, it is common practice in publications to provide a description of study sites, including the climatic characteristics that distinguish them. A typical statement might be: “The climate conditions are temperate with average annual temperature and precipitation at 14.9 °C and 980 mm, respectively.”1 These precise temperature and precipitation values suggest a specific time period and geographic location of the climate record, yet this information is not included in the site description. The lack of a timeframe and data source implies a sense of permanency to these values. Scientists agree that climate is in flux, so why are we not disconcerted when we come across descriptions such as this example? Importantly, if we do not require more rigorous and accurate descriptions of climate data, how can studies be successfully replicated or appropriately compared and synthesized across time and space?

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Fig. 1: Trends over time in reporting practices.

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Papper for help with data collection, S. Veloz and T. Dawson for comments that improved this manuscript, and M. Schildhauer for discussions on ecological metadata language. N.M.H. acknowledges support from a Villum Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF96) for support to the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate. The research was further supported by NSF Research Grants to A.H.T. (DEB-1354552) and S.N.S. (DBI-1523866), and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Grants to M.F.O. (#DGE-1106400), M.M.K., and R.L.O. (#1049702).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Naia Morueta-Holme, Meagan F. Oldfather, Rachael L. Olliff-Yang, Andrew P. Weitz, Matthew M. Kling, Seema N. Sheth, Andrew H. Thornhill & David D. Ackerly

  2. Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Naia Morueta-Holme

  3. Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Carrie R. Levine

  4. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Erin C. Riordan

  5. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Cory Merow

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  1. Naia Morueta-Holme
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Contributions

N.M.H., M.F.O., R.L.O., A.P.W., C.R.L., M.M.K., E.C.R., C.M. and D.D.A. designed the study. N.M.H., M.F.O., R.L.O., A.P.W., C.R.L., S.N.S., M.M.K., E.C.R., C.M. and A.H.T. collected the data. N.M.H. analysed the data, and wrote the paper with D.D.A. M.M.K. and C.M. contributed to analysis and data visualizations. All authors contributed to editing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Naia Morueta-Holme.

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Morueta-Holme, N., Oldfather, M.F., Olliff-Yang, R.L. et al. Best practices for reporting climate data in ecology. Nature Clim Change 8, 92–94 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-017-0060-2

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