UC Davis joins effort to save climate change data out of fear Trump could purge info

UC Davis is joining a nationwide movement to backup scientific data about climate change and the environment produced by public funds.

The #DataRescueDavis event is part of the nationwide DataRefuge project, spearheaded by the University of Pennsylvania.

DataRefuge was started after the election of President Donald Trump to ensure that federally funded scientific research remains available to the public, “under an administration that denies the fact of ongoing climate change,” according to the website.

Thursday’s event, which is open to the public, will begin with a presentation that covers which data sets on federal websites should be copied and how to access them, among other things. Volunteers with coding, programing and data scraping backgrounds will offer guidance throughout the day.

The collected data is kept in multiple locations, according to DataRefuge.

Some UC Davis staff are involved in the event, but none are being paid for it, said Jessica Nusbaum, a spokeswoman for the university.

The event, hosted by the UC Davis Library and the Data Science Initiative, will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Room 360 of the Shields Library on the Davis campus. It is open to the public.

Participants should bring their laptops.

This story was originally published February 1, 2017 at 4:10 PM with the headline "UC Davis joins effort to save climate change data out of fear Trump could purge info."