Making climate data accessible as a step toward addressing climate change.
If we want to solve the world’s most pressing problems, the knowledge about those problems must be open. Climate change, and the resulting harm to our global biodiversity, has been one of the world’s most pressing problems for decades.
Creative Commons launched the Open Climate Data project in Spring 2023 to facilitate the opening and sharing of climate datasets and data models available across the globe.
About the Project
Creative Commons gives everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their work, under copyright law. This is our contribution to solving the world’s most pressing problems – by opening up access, knowledge, and culture about them.
Climate data that is open, accessible, and easy to share is critical for those that want to find it, read it, and build on it in order to address climate change. Our goal is to provide comprehensive and transparent guidance in response to the question “What am I allowed do with this climate data?” for scientists, researchers, policymakers, educators, civil society organizations, advocates, journalists, and other people working to understand and address climate change.
Alongside climate data publishers from governments, academia, nonprofits, and companies around the world, we are collectively creating a community standard for sharing climate data and granting use permissions to researchers (and to all people in general). This work is in addition to our Open Climate Campaign to open up research on climate change, with SPARC and EIFL.
Contact the Open Climate Data Project
Email us at openclimatedata@creativecommons.org.