Background
The Earth's climate has always been changing, with seven cycles of warming and cooling in the last 650,000 years alone (NASA, 2020). The current period of global temperature increase is of particular interest (and concern) because it is very likely that it is being caused by human activity, and producing negative impacts in a variety of areas, such as agriculture, natural ecosystems, extreme weather, economic activity, and human health (Ministry of the Environment et al., 2018).
Open data
The World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal provides data which you are free to use for non-commercial purposes provided you provide attribution. You can search for historical data on temperature and rainfall, or you can search future projections based on several different representative concentration pathways (RCPs), which describe different possible scenarios for the future. Your search can be limited by country, or latitude and longitude. Historical data is available from 1901 - 2016. Clicking the "Download" button will save the data as a CSV file which can be opened in Microsoft Excel.
Example research questions
To answer some of these questions, you might need to find other data to combine with the climate change data (e.g., global deforestation, use of renewable energy sources, sales of electric vehicles, glacier coverage).
What is the main contributing factor to climate change in the 20th century?
What measures need to be taken to control climate change under different RCP scenarios?
How effective would planting more trees be in controlling climate change?
References
Ministry of the Environment, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Japan Meteorological Agency (2018). Synthesis Report on Observations, Projections and Impact Assessments of Climate Change, https://www.env.go.jp/earth/tekiou/pamph2018_full_Eng.pdf Accessed April 7, 2020.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (2020). Climate Change: How Do We Know? https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ Accessed April 7, 2020.