Datasets

Every public dataset the book uses, kept here as a backup, with its source, license, and a short note explaining each column.

Every analysis in this book uses real, public Earth and environmental data. This page keeps a copy of each dataset, organized by chapter, so you always have a way to get it.

Why these copies are here

The book downloads its data live from public servers (USGS, NOAA, the World Bank, and others). Those servers are usually available, but sometimes one is down for maintenance or has moved. If that happens while you are working through a chapter, download the dataset here instead and carry on. Think of it like a spare key kept with a trusted neighbor: you normally use your own, but the spare is there for the day the lock sticks.

These are the original public datasets, unchanged. For each one below you will find where it comes from, who to credit, and the terms of use. The book’s complete chapter-by-chapter code (with the data bundled in) is a separate, purchase-linked download on the Code & Data page.

Opening the files
  • .csv — a table; opens in Excel, Google Sheets, or R (read.csv).
  • .zip — a compressed bundle; unzip it first.
  • .geojson / shapefile — map shapes; open in R (sf::st_read) or any GIS tool.
  • .rdb — a USGS text table; open in R or a text editor.
  • .tenv3 — a plain-text table of GPS positions.
  • .nc (NetCDF) — a scientific grid format; open in R (ncdf4).

After each dataset there is a short table explaining every column: what it means, its units, and what was measured.

Chapter 1 — Getting started

Volcano elevation grid (volcano)

A height map of Maungawhau (Mt Eden), a volcano in Auckland, New Zealand, used in the very first plotting examples. The whole hill is laid out as a grid; each cell holds the ground height of a 10 m × 10 m patch — a height map, like a topographic model of the hill.

Download volcano.csv

  • Source: Built into R (the datasets package). Terms: free to use and share.
  • Layout: 87 rows × 61 columns of numbers; each number is the elevation in meters at that spot. There are no labels — position in the grid is the location.

Chapter 2 — Preparing trustworthy data

Groundwater levels (USGS)

How high the water sits underground at one monitoring well on Long Island, recorded almost every day for 25 years. Picture a drinking straw pushed deep into the ground: this is the water height inside that straw, tracked over time.

Download usgs_groundwater_…rdb

  • Source: U.S. Geological Survey, National Water Information System (NWIS). Well 404416073491801, 2000–2025.
  • Terms: Public domain (U.S. Government work). Free to use and share.
  • Please credit: “U.S. Geological Survey, National Water Information System.”

Columns

Column Meaning Units
agency_cd Who recorded it (always “USGS”) text
site_no The well’s ID number text
datetime The day of the reading date
…_62610_00003 Water level: height of the underground water surface, measured against a fixed nationwide sea-level benchmark (like a “zero” line painted on every well in the country) feet above the NGVD 1929 datum
…_62610_00003_cd A quality stamp: A = approved, P = provisional (not yet double-checked) code

Daily precipitation, JFK Airport (NOAA GHCN-Daily)

How much rain and snow fell each day at New York’s JFK Airport weather station. The book pairs this with the groundwater data to see whether wet periods line up with the water rising.

Download ghcn-daily_USW00094789_JFK.csv

  • Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Historical Climatology Network – Daily. Station USW00094789 (JFK International Airport).
  • Terms: Public domain (NOAA / U.S. Government, U.S. station). Free to use and share.
  • Please credit: “NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, GHCN-Daily.”

Key columns (the file also carries many extra weather variables)

Column Meaning Units
STATION, NAME The station’s ID and name text
DATE The day date
LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, ELEVATION Where the station sits degrees, meters
PRCP Rain/melted-snow that day. Stored in tenths of a millimeter, so 15 means 1.5 mm — like measuring rainfall with an extra-fine ruler tenths of mm
TMAX, TMIN Warmest and coldest temperature that day, also in tenths (so 233 = 23.3 °C) tenths of °C
SNOW, SNWD New snowfall and snow depth on the ground mm
*_ATTRIBUTES Quality and source flags for the value next to them codes

Chapter 3 — Spatial structure

Long Island counties (NYS GIS)

The map outlines of the four Long Island counties — Kings, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk — used as the base map for the elevation and flood examples. Like tracing the coastline of the island onto paper.

Download nys_long_island_counties.geojson

  • Source: New York State GIS Program Office, NYS Civil Boundaries (counties layer).
  • Terms: Public New York State government data. Provided as-is, for planning and general use only, with no warranty (no formal open-data license is published, so we keep a copy here with credit).
  • Please credit: “New York State GIS Program Office, NYS Civil Boundaries.”

Columns: NAME (county name), ABBREV (short code), plus the geometry (the actual boundary shape).

Elevation & bathymetry (elevatr / AWS Terrain Tiles) — reproduce on demand

The height of the land (and depth of the nearby seabed) across the region, used to build the digital elevation models, hillshades, and flood maps. Imagine the land covered by a fine checkerboard where every square stores the ground height there — the same idea as the depth numbers printed on the floor of a swimming pool.

This one is assembled on demand from open map tiles rather than stored as a single file. To recreate it, the book calls elevatr::get_elev_raster() for the area and detail level shown in the chapter.

  • Source: AWS Terrain Tiles (built from public elevation data such as SRTM and the USGS National Elevation Dataset), retrieved via the elevatr R package.
  • Terms: Open data; credit the underlying providers.
  • Please credit: “Elevation from AWS Terrain Tiles via the elevatr R package.”
  • Values: ground (or seabed) height in meters; below sea level is negative.

Chapter 4 — Time series

Chapter 4 introduces time-series methods (trends, seasonal cycles, and how values relate to their own past) using a small made-up (simulated) temperature and humidity series created right in the chapter, so there is no separate file to download. The same methods apply directly to the dated records used elsewhere in the book, such as the GPS and groundwater series.

Chapter 5 — Modeling and prediction

Nottingham temperatures (nottem)

Twenty years of monthly average air temperature at Nottingham Castle, England (1920–1939). A long, steady heartbeat of the seasons, used to practice spotting yearly cycles.

Download nottem.csv

  • Source: Built into R (the datasets package). Terms: free to use and share (ships with R).

Columns: year, month (Jan–Dec), temp_F (that month’s average temperature, in °F).

New York air quality (airquality)

Daily air-quality and weather readings in New York, May–September 1973. The book uses it to predict ozone from temperature and other factors.

Download airquality.csv

  • Source: Built into R (the datasets package). Terms: free to use and share.

Columns

Column Meaning Units
Ozone Ozone in the air. Parts per billion is like counting how many red marbles are in a bag of a billion marbles parts per billion
Solar.R Strength of sunshine reaching the ground Langleys
Wind Wind speed miles per hour
Temp Air temperature °F
Month, Day When (month 5–9, day 1–31) number

Chapter 6 — Case studies

GPS station NYCI (Nevada Geodetic Lab)

Daily position of a GPS ground marker near New York City. Every day it records how far the marker has shifted east, north, and up since a fixed starting point — like marking how far a parked car has slowly rolled from its original spot, measured to the millimeter.

Download gps_NYCI.tenv3

  • Source: Nevada Geodetic Laboratory, University of Nevada, Reno — station NYCI.
  • Terms: Open data; please credit. Cite Blewitt, Hammond & Kreemer (2018), Eos, doi:10.1029/2018EO104623.
  • Please credit: “Nevada Geodetic Laboratory, University of Nevada, Reno.”

Key columns

Column Meaning Units
site Station name (NYCI) text
YYMMMDD, yyyy.yyyy The date, written two ways (calendar, and as a decimal year like 2006.31) date / years
__MJD A running day-counter scientists use, so any date becomes one plain number (handy for math) day number
__east(m), _north(m), ____up(m) How far the marker has moved sideways (east, north) and vertically (up) from its reference position meters
sig_e(m), sig_n(m), sig_u(m) The “give or take” — how uncertain each position is meters
_latitude(deg), _longitude(deg), __height(m) Where the station is on Earth degrees, meters

Long Island counties (NYS GIS)

Same county outlines as Chapter 3, reused as the base map for the flood case study. Download nys_long_island_counties.geojson — source, terms, and columns are identical to the Chapter 3 entry.

Chapter 7 — Global change and sustainability

Greenhouse-gas emissions & population (World Bank, WDI)

For nearly every country, total greenhouse-gas emissions and total population, year by year since 1960. The book divides one by the other to get emissions per person, then maps how that has changed worldwide.

Download emissions EN.GHG.ALL.MT.CE.AR5 (zip) · Download population SP.POP.TOTL (zip)

  • Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI).
  • Terms: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) — free to use and share with credit.
  • Please credit: “World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0).”

Columns (each file is a wide table)

Column Meaning Units
Country Name, Country Code The country and its 3-letter code (e.g. USA, BRA, KEN) text
Indicator Name, Indicator Code What is being measured text
1960 … 2024 One column per year, holding that year’s value see below

The emissions value is total greenhouse gases in megatonnes of CO₂-equivalent. Different gases trap heat by different amounts, so “CO₂-equivalent” rebalances them onto one common scale — like converting several currencies into dollars so you can add them into a single total. The population value is simply the number of people.

Country boundaries (Natural Earth)

The outline shapes of every country in the world, used as the canvas for the global emissions maps. A blank world map waiting to be colored in.

Download ne_50m_admin_0_countries.zip

  • Source: Natural Earth (1:50m cultural vectors), via the rnaturalearth R package.
  • Terms: Public domain — free to use and share, no restrictions.
  • Please credit (optional): “Made with Natural Earth.”

Key columns: NAME (country name), ISO_A3 (3-letter country code, used to match the World Bank data), plus the geometry (each country’s outline). The file also carries extras like continent, region, and an estimated population.

Credits and terms, in one place

The datasets above belong to their original providers and are shared here under the terms listed with each. Please keep the credit lines if you reuse them. The book and this site only keep copies of the public data so it is easy and reliable to get; they make no claim of ownership over the underlying data.