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Borehole

          Drilling rig at night, San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD). USGS photo.                        Land drilling rig. ORNL Photo.                         Truck mounted drilling rig. USGS photo.

Borehole data are direct measurements of temperature from boreholes drilled into the Earth's crust. Departures from the expected increase in temperature with depth (the geothermal gradient) can be interpreted in terms of changes in temperature at the surface in the past, which have slowly diffused downward, warming or cooling layers meters below the surface. A majority of the borehole data at the World Data Center are from the University of Michigan's Global Database of Borehole Temperatures and Climate Reconstructions.

Obtaining Data at the World Data Center

Search Datasets

  • Interactive Map
    Select study locations by region, proximity to a point or text-based attributes.
  • Google Earth Map
    Locate and download borehole studies using a Google Earth map interface. Google Earth must be installed to use this search tool.
  • Search All Paleoclimatology Data
    Access a free text search of our entire climate study archive.
  • NCEI Paleo Web Service
    ​Harvest borehole study metadata records using the NCEI Paleo Web Service.

Browse Datasets

Contributing Data

Contribute data and study description information by emailing your data to paleo@noaa.gov. Investigators who wish to contribute their data to the University of Michigan Borehole database can use the link provided below.