The International Surface Pressure Databank version 2

The International Surface Pressure Databank (ISPD) is the world's largest collection of global surface and sea-level pressure observations. It was developed by extracting observations from established international archives, through international cooperation with data recovery facilitated by the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) initiative, and directly by contributing universities, organizations, and countries. The dataset period is currently 1768–2012 and consists of three data components: observations from land stations, marine observing systems, and tropical cyclone best track pressure reports. Version 2 of the ISPD (ISPDv2) was created to be observational input for the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project (20CR) and contains the quality control and assimilation feedback metadata from the 20CR. Since then, it has been used for various general climate and weather studies, and an updated version 3 (ISPDv3) has been used in the ERA-20C reanalysis in connection with the European Reanalysis of Global Climate Observations project (ERA-CLIM). The focus of this paper is on the ISPDv2 and the inclusion of the 20CR feedback metadata. The Research Data Archive at the National Center for Atmospheric Research provides data collection and access for the ISPDv2, and will provide access to future versions.

The European Union, the World Trade Organization and Cultural Diversity

The chapter maps these trade versus culture developments in the WTO and the positions of the European Union (EU or the Union) and its member states, which were not always coherent. It also looks at the actual results of the trade versus culture contestation – that is, the rules on trade in goods and services in the WTO and how they reflect the need for more policy space in matters of cultural policy, which the EU so ardently pressed for. The chapter further analyses the evolution of both the international trade regulation and the discourse on cultural policy. This discourse has in fact undergone a major transformation in the last two decades, as it has moved from the ‘exception culturelle’ rhetoric, which dominated the Uruguay trade talks, towards a more positive but also more pro-active agenda under the slogan of cultural diversity. The EU has been a major driver of this transformation, which has succeeded in mobilising the international community and ultimately led to the adoption of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. The chapter concludes by appraisal of the current state of the debate situating it into the broader picture of contemporary global governance. It asks how the EU could effectively pursue its cultural policy aspirations and endorse its cultural diversity agenda in a world of complexity and rapid technological change, in particular in view of the affordances of digital media.