Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Science Rendezvous > 2009 Posters
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Thirty years of data management for Earth observations at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)

Ronald L. S. Weaver, Richard L. Armstrong, Florence Fetterer, and Roger G. Barry

Over the past 30 years the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has managed data in a way that directly or indirectly supports earth observation systems. NSIDC's Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) supports the cryospheric missions of the NASA Earth Observing System’s satellites. The new Cooperative Data and Information System (CADIS), joint with NCAR and UCAR, supports the (largely) NSF funded Arctic Observing Network (AON). Indirectly, NSIDC supports the Global Climate Observing System and other Earth monitoring efforts by archiving data that contribute to their missions. Some simple truths about observing systems emerge from our long history of storing and serving their data.

They include:

• New instruments have to be 'backward compatible' with old. A few long, continuous, records are at least as valuable as numerous sporadic new short records from a number of PIs or satellite programs, even if the short records are more precise.
• International collaborations are essential for building networks and for establishing data sharing protocols.
• While some observations are useful on their own (like sea ice or snow extent) many are only informative when combined with other like or contrasting observations in some way. It is difficult to get funding for developing higher level or integrative products like atlases, climatologies, near-real-time data streams, or even data on the same grid or in the same format, but these are some of NSIDC's most used data sets.
• Strategic IT decisions impact the cost and effectiveness of systems for managing and distributing observing system data. The challenge to IT managers is the continuing need to drive costs downward yet continue the same level of service in an ever changing technology and user requirements world.

In the coming decades we expect reinforcement of these trends, increasing emphasis on multi-sensor products and multi-disciplinary data sets, all in a rapidly changing IT environment.