About Us

Since 1985, monthly means of the surface energy fluxes have been systematically extracted from periodicals, monographs, data reports and unpublished manuscripts under the direction of Prof. Dr. Atsumu Ohmura. After certain standardization and formalization procedures, these monthly means were stored in the Global Energy Balance Archive paper records. In November 1986, the GEBA was made a project (A7) of the World Climate Program - Water.
 
The first version of the GEBA database was designed and implemented in 1988 (Ohmura, Gilgen, Wild 1989). In 1991, the GEBA database was first made available to the scientific community and the state of the GEBA was reported in Ohmura and Gilgen (1991).
 
In 1994 and 1995, the GEBA database was redesigned and the global radiation data were updated (Gilgen, Wild, Ohmura 1997). In December 1996, 220'000 energy flux monthly means were stored in the database. The GEBA has been available on the internet since October 1997.
 
Since the retirement of Prof. Ohmura and Dr. Gilgen in 2007, Dr. Martin Wild ensures  continuation of GEBA at ETH Zurich. He was supported by Dr. Guido Muller (data manager until 2017), as well as by the IT Services of ETH (database maintainance),  sponsored by the commission for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). In collaboration with the IT services, GEBA unterwent a major revision in 2008. This included  the transition of GEBA on a new server and the development of an entirely new webinterface.
 
The database is undergoing a major update of its contents (currently 570'000 energy flux monthly means stored) and complete renewal of its infrastructure since a new position devoted to GEBA started in April 2019, co-funded by the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss within the framework of GCOS Switzerland.