Climate Update

Climate update (monthly umbrella update)

All OWID climate data is updated once a month as a single batch: every updateable climate-namespace dataset is bumped to one common version date, in one PR, with one Slack announcement. This skill owns which datasets, in what order, and the single-PR / single-announcement discipline. It delegates the per-dataset mechanics (snapshot → meadow → garden → grapher, diffs, metadata checks, chart upgrade) to /update-dataset — run each chain through that flow on the same branch.

The matching reminder lives in owid-issues/.github/workflows/update-climate.yml (one monthly issue on the 10th). Wildfires is the one dataset with a reminder of its own on top of that: update-climate-wildfires.yml fires weekly from May to the end of September.

Modes

• Full monthly update (default): bump every updateable dataset below to a common new version date.
• Wildfires-only subset: bump just weekly_wildfires (and optionally yearly_burned_area) to a new version, for the weekly in-season refresh. Follow /wildfires-update, which covers the source's weekly grid, its provisional last data point, and the snapshot's silent per-country failure mode. Come back here only if you are bumping the whole batch.

Updateable datasets (climate.yml "UPDATEABLE" section)

Grouped by source. Bump all of these to the same new version date.

Plus two derived/aggregate datasets with no snapshot of their own:

• long_run_ghg_concentration (combines NOAA ghg_concentration with the frozen EPA series)
• climate_change_impacts (the aggregate; pulls most of the rows above)

The yearly sources usually show no change in a given month — that is expected, not a bug.

Frozen — NEVER bump these (climate.yml "NOT UPDATEABLE" section)

Skip entirely. They receive no new data and several feed climate_change_impacts:

• EPA 2024-04-17: ghg_concentration, ocean_heat_content, ice_sheet_mass_balance, mass_balance_us_glaciers
• global_sea_level (2024-01-28, NOAA Climate.gov)
• ipcc_scenarios
• The 12 migrated legacy chains (one-off papers / historical sources, dates 2017-2022)

If a frozen source's producer ever republishes, that is a separate, deliberate version bump — not part of the monthly run.

Dependency order

1. Bump and run the leaf source chains (snapshot → meadow → garden) for every updateable dataset above. climate_change_impacts's frozen deps (EPA, global_sea_level) stay on their old versions — reference them unchanged.
2. Bump and run long_run_ghg_concentration, then the climate_change_impacts aggregate.
3. Run all grapher steps and the climate_change explorer (the explorer stays latest).

The grapher families to rebuild: the 7 surface_* graphers, total_precipitation_annual, the 4 wildfire graphers, sst/sst_by_month, nasa_ozone_hole, the 3 sea_ice_* graphers, climate_change_impacts_annual/_monthly, and yearly_burned_area.

Procedure

1. Create the branch + draft PR with etl pr "📊 Update climate data" data. One branch and one PR for the whole batch.
2. Run each updateable chain through the /update-dataset flow on that branch, all targeting today's date as <new_version> so they land on a common version. Bump the aggregate (climate_change_impacts) only after its sources are done, so it picks up the new versions once rather than repeatedly.
3. Chart remap on staging via the Indicator Upgrader. Variables remap by catalogPath, so most charts follow automatically. Watch the once-off cases: any dataset moving from latest or changing namespace needs its remap reviewed explicitly (see below).
4. Verify on staging: Anomalist + Chart Diff (enable "Show all charts").
5. One announcement: run /data-updates-comms for the combined batch, post to #data-updates-comms, and draft the single /latest post. Do not produce per-dataset announcements.

One-off migrations (only on the first run after the refactor)

These are structural moves that happen once, then the dataset behaves like any other updateable one:

• weekly_wildfires: latest → versioned. Its grapher variables get new IDs, so the wildfire charts (and any wildfires explorer) need a ghost-variable remap — see /remapping-ghost-variables.
• ipcc_scenarios: namespace emissions → climate, and EPA 2024-04-17: namespace epa → climate (retires the epa namespace). ipcc also moves its standalone explorer. EPA has no charts of its own (it only feeds climate_change_impacts), so its move is chart-free; ipcc's needs an explorer/chart remap.

After these land, update this skill's inventory if any short_names or namespaces changed.