LibGuides: Climate Science: Literature Search

Welcome

Climate Science has many facets. This guide focuses on available scientific and technical resources related to global climate change and its effects, meteorology, and atmospheric science. A vast number of government agencies and organizations around the world collect and provide data, mapping, and other information, often freely available.

Searching the Literature

Choosing an index database for climate and atmospheric science depends on what aspects of the topic you're looking for. Google Scholar and Web of Science are the most general in nature.

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Citation index covering only journals across all disciplines, with strongest coverage in the hard sciences.
Updated weekly. The Web of Science Core Collection is a group of databases (Science Citation Index Expanded, 1900-present; Social Sciences Citation Index, 1900-present; Arts & Humanities Citation Index, 1975-present) that together cover more than 21,000 journals across all disciplines. The Emerging Sources Citation Index (2005-present) tracks thousands of additional journals that are being considered for inclusion in the main citation indexes. Other files track references from conference proceedings (1990-present) and citations to books (2005-present).
The Web of Science platform currently also provides temporary access to several databases that are not part of the Core Collection, including Biosis Citation Index, Data Citation Index, and Zoological Record.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Machine index covers a huge amount of digital content on all topics. Good for fast lookups but should not be relied on for comprehensive literature searches.
Google Scholar uses the popular Google search engine to enable searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. It includes a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Google Scholar includes full text and citations.
Use this link to access Google Scholar, and see our Google Scholar Guide for information on using this resource.
If you encounter a warning about the security certificate when using the FindIt@UT tool in Google Scholar, you can learn more about that using this guide.
GreenFILE This link opens in a new window
Covers all aspects of human impact to the environment, including global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling. Provides indexing and abstracts for more than 1M records from scholarly, government and general-interest titles, as well as Open Access full text for more than 15,000 records. (Ebscohost)
Offers well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. The database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 538,000 records, as well as Open Access full text for more than 5,800 records.
INSPEC This link opens in a new window
Part of this database covers Physics, including atmospheric physics, geophysics and meteorology, with good coverage of climate-related science. (IET/Engineering Village)
Updated weekly. Indexes the research literature of physics; electrical engineering and electronics; & computers and control. Offers over 15 million records and strong international coverage. The archive portion, which was formerly separate, is now integrated with the current file.
Compendex This link opens in a new window
The primary index for general engineering and applied science topics. The best place to search for literature and patents related to mitigation technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration. (Elsevier/Engineering Village)
Updated weekly. Ei Compendex indexes the research literature of the field of engineering. The product contains more than 17 million total records. Over a million new records, with abstracts, are added per year. More than 3,600 journals and 4,100 conference publications and trade magazines are currently indexed. Customizable e-mail or RSS alerts are available.
SciTech Premium Collection This link opens in a new window
This complex aggregation of index databases and full text includes Meteorological & Geoastrophysical Abstracts and the Earth, Atmospheric & Aquatic Science Database, among many other things. (ProQuest)
Provides full-text titles on the Natural Sciences and Technology from around the world, including scholarly journals, trade and industry journals, magazines, technical reports, conference proceedings, government publications and more. For researchers who need to conduct comprehensive literature reviews, this database includes specialized, editorial-controlled A&I resources for discovery of relevant scholarly research and technical literature critical to the discipline.
SciFinder This link opens in a new window
Primary index of the chemical sciences, with comprehensive coverage of atmospheric chemistry. Registration required. More Information (CAS)
Updated daily. Requires users to register with a utexas.edu email account. Provides integrated access to the Chemical Abstracts suite of databases with millions of bibliographic records covering the worldwide chemical literature, including patents; as well as over 100 million substance records, with chemical structures, names, synonyms, and associated property data; plus millions of searchable organic reactions. Search by topic, author, chemical identification terms (names, formulas, Registry Numbers), and chemical structures.
GeoRef This link opens in a new window
Primary index for earth sciences. Focus is firmly on geology, but also covers some atmospheric and climate topics. (AGI/Engineering Village)
Updated bi-monthly. Covers the geology of North America from 1785 to the present, and the geology of the rest of the world from 1933 to the present. Contains references to geoscience journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports and theses. Includes references to all publications of the U.S. Geological Survey. Masters' theses and doctoral dissertations from U.S. and Canadian universities are also covered.
AGRICOLA This link opens in a new window
USDA's index of agricultural literature in all formats.
Updated daily. Contains bibliographic citations with some abstracts covering agriculture, animal husbandry, animal and human nutrition, forestry, plant pathology, plant science, human ecology, agricultural economics and rural sociology. Includes journal articles, books, state extension and experiment station publications and USDA documents.
Access the USDA National Agricultural Library through AGRICOLA Books.
PAIS This link opens in a new window
Covers aspects related to public policy, politics, and social issues.
Updated monthly. Bibliographic index with abstracts covering the full range of political, social, and public policy issues. Covers selected journal articles, books, statistics, yearbooks, directories, conference proceedings, pamphlets, reports, government documents, and microfiche. More than 1,600 journals and over 8,000 monographs are indexed each year. Includes documents published worldwide in any of six languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The subject headings and abstracts are in English.
The PAIS Archive database comprises a retrospective conversion of the PAIS Annual Cumulated Bulletin, Volumes 1-62, published 1915-1976. At completion of this conversion, the PAIS Archive contains over 1.23 million records.

Full Text Resources

American Meteorological Society (AMS) This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated weekly. Provides full text access to the journals published by the American Meteorological Society.
For a definition of an alerting service, please see our Alerts description page.
AMS Journal Online Issue Notification will notify you by email of new journal postings on a continuing basis. To sign up for email alerts, click on the JOIN: Journal Online Issue Notification link on the AMS Online page.
AGU (American Geophysical Union) Journals This link opens in a new window
1896 - present. Unlimited users.
Provides full text access to the journals published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU), an organization known for peer-reviewed scientific journals geared towards earth and space science research. Coverage includes titles such as the Journal of Geophysical Research (7 parts), Tectonics, Water Resources Research, Reviews of Geophysics, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, and Paleoceanography.
Earth, Atmospheric & Aquatic Science Collection This link opens in a new window
1950 - present. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Collection includes a wide range of materials, such as scholarly journals, trade journals, conference proceedings, technical reports, dissertations, and government publications. In addition to thousands of full-text sources, this collection contains all the records found in major environmental sciences indexes, including Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA), Meteorological & Geoastrophysical Abstracts (MGA), and Oceanic Abstracts. Subjects covered include aquaculture, atmospheric pollution, climatology, geology, marine biology, meteorology, oceanography, water quality, weather, and more.