Penguins released: Antarctica – CGA

I am pleased to announce the integration of the Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica (CGA) with 18’104 places. The CGA is compiled by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) who have kindly given us the permission to use their data under the condition that we publish the disclaimer below. The CGA is itself an aggregator and includes data from 23 sources from 22 countries. 12’000 features are from US sources, Russia and the UK both contribute 4’800 places. Some places are contributed by several countries.

SCAR Disclaimer :

• The SCAR CGA is a composite gazetteer and has no legal status.
• The information in the CGA is that provided by national naming authorities to SCAR.
• SCAR does not name any features, only SCAR member countries do.
• The accuracy of the geographic coordinates (latitudes and longitudes) for the named features is unknown to SCAR, but SCAR is working with the national providers to improve them.
• A third party with an enquiry about one of these names should always come back to the source of the data, that is SCAR.
• The data would probably be adequate for most uses, but you should refrain from using it for showing information at a very detailed level

[Photos of Emperor Penguins thanks to NOAA Photo Library]