The IPCC Data Distribution Centre User Support

The DDC has been established by the IPCC to provide a common and easily accessible set of information relating to climate change scenarios for impacts and adaptation assessments. As well as providing direct access to GCM data (DDC GCM Archive, Yellow Pages), the DDC also provides users with access to a variety of other scenario information and descriptions of these various datasets and how they can be used in scenario construction and impacts assessment.

Users often have questions about what different scenario datasets represent and how they can be used in scenario construction and application. We have provided answers to a set of the most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Although these answers cannot be exhaustive they provide some assistance to users who may be new to climate scenario issues. A more structured guide to the DDC scenarios is provided in the DDC Guidelines document. This report is available as a stand-alone hard copy report, but we have duplicated this report here on the DDC web site. We would encourage you to read or browse through this document.

It may be that some DDC users have difficulty downloading data from the DDC web site using the ftp facility. For these, and other potential users, the DDC has prepared a CD-ROM that contains a core set of data displayed on these DDC Green Pages and also contains the visualisation software. The CD-ROM comes with its own Netscape browser enabling CD users to run the same software on their own local machine as remote users can do by accessing the DDC web site. For ordering details and a description of the CD-ROM follow this link.

Finally, if you have any questions about the DDC, find errors on the site, or have general questions about climate scenarios that we can add to our FAQs, then please contact the DDC management at: ipcc.ddc@uea.ac.uk. We will do our best to reply.