Literature-based knowledge discovery in climate science

Abstract

Climate change caused by anthropogenic activity is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Researchers are striving to understand the effects of global warming on the ecological systems of the oceans, and how these ecological systems influence the global climate, a line of research that is crucial in order to counteract or adapt to the effects of global warming. A major challenge that researchers in this area are facing, is the huge amount of potentially relevant literature, as insights from widely different fields such as biology, chemistry, climatology and oceanography can prove crucial in understanding the effects of global warming on the oceans. To alleviate some of the work load from researchers, information extraction tools can be used to extract relevant information from the scientific literature automatically, and discovery support tools can be developed to assist researchers in their efforts. This master thesis conducts fundamental research into the development of discovery support tools for oceanographic climate science, focusing primarily on the information extraction component.