"The following report of the Second NOAA Data Quality and Continuity Workshop contains summaries of issues and problems presented at the first workshop as well as papers on additional topics that have come to our attention since the the initial workshop. Material for some presentations that appear on the workshop agenda has been excluded based on overlap with other topics. Other papers that have recently come to our attention, but not presented at either workshop, have been included to highlight additional issues within NOAA"--Introduction

Is the climate warming? Is the hydrological cycle intensifying? Is the climate becoming more variable or extreme? Is the chemical composition of the atmosphere changing? Is the solar irradiance constant? Answers to these questions are fundamental to understanding, predicting, and assessing climate on time scales ranging from weeks to a century. Atmospheric, oceanic, and environmental scientists have primarily relied on an ad-hoc collection of disparate environmental observational and data management systems to address these problems. But these systems were not designed to measure climate variations and, as a result, changes and variations of the earth system during the instrumental climate record is far from unequivocal. This book develops a framework from which a Global Climate Observing System, currently being discussed in international forums, can be implemented to monitor changes and variations of climate. Audience: Administrators, policy makers, professionals, graduate students, and others interested in learning how we can ensure a long-term climate record for application to national economic development and understanding ecosystem dynamics.