NOAA/NCDC Data Access Successes and Challenges

1. NOAA/NCDC Data Access Successes and Challenges

2. Data Access Success Stories NOAA Climate Services Portal, Drought Portal, Model Portal • www.climate.gov, www.drought.gov, nomads.ncdc.noaa.gov • Being developed and integrated to provide one-stop access to widely distributed datasets, products, services • Drought Portal geared toward providing critical information to decision-makers • Climate Services Portal designed to reach a very wide segment of users – scientists, businesses, decision/policy-makers, news media, public, etc • Model Portal provides access to reanalyses and numerical model output • Many partners involved across NOAA, other agencies, and at the regional/state level

3. Data Access Success Stories Weather and Climate Toolkit • Desktop application providing simple visualization and data export of weather and climate data • Supports 22 data formats (Model, Satellite and Radar) • Based on community developed tools and standards • Data interoperability with diverse user communities • Export data to GIS, KMZ, NetCDF and text formats

4. Data Access Success Stories Interoperability with Google Earth • Weather and Climate Toolkit export of 3D Radar sweeps and isosurfaces for Google Earth visualization

5. Data Access Success Stories Access to Climate Forecast System Reanalyses • 250 TBs of data now accessible online via NOMADS/National Climate Model Portal • 40-50 TBs per month of data downloaded • Data volumes continue to grow as data are ingested from NCEP • Access provided via OPeNDAP/HTTP/FTP/GridFTP • Accommodate user’s most requested data by sub-setting long time series • Foster research within geo-science communities (ocean, weather, and climate)

6. Data Access Success Stories Map/Web Services and Data Visualization • GIS Map Services provide centralized access to numerous datasets and products • Web Services such as WMS, WFS, KML/KMZ (for Google Earth, etc) • Access to the data and metadata, including machine to machine access • Data visualization via tools such as Multigraph provide graphical display of various parameters • Services continue to be built-out for additional datasets and products

7. Data Access Issues/Challenges Metadata and Data Issues • Collection-level metadata (FGDC/ISSO) for many datasets not robust enough to allow for complex searches by parameter, time period, theme (eg, flooding, hurricanes), etc • In some cases – no metadata record exist • Finer-granule metadata (by location) often missing or lacking – eg, to allow for search by location (state, city, etc) of temperature data available for a specific date • Wide range in data formats and in vocabularies used to describe the data • Data integration very difficult due to these issues • EDMC role? ......... Emphasize the critical need for robust metadata, beginning at the dataset/product level

8. Data Access Issues/Challenges Growing User Requirements • Growing number of user requests for larger volumes of data • Major data campaigns – eg, NPP, JPSS, GOES-R, NEXRAD Dual Pol, CFSR, etc • NOAA Climate Services Portal, Drought Portal, and National Climate Model Portal: increasing visibility and access for climatological data • Advanced technology Web Services and GIS Services providing greater capabilities for users • Direct machine to machine access for “power users” and for reprocessing efforts • Higher resolution data (in-situ and gridded) – continuing to increase over time • Data mining requirements (internal and external to NOAA) – eg, mining of NEXRAD data for precipitation and hail analyses • Rapidly increasing internet bandwidth at lower costs, such as N-WAVE, and increasing CPU capabilities for users to manage large data volumes

9. Data Access Issues/Challenges Growing User Requirements