Tools and Services available from the Atmospheric Sciences Data Center

Two of the primary functions of the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) Atmospheric Sciences Data Center (ASDC) are to distribute data to a wide variety of user communities such as scientists, researchers, and educational and commercial professionals and to provide expert assistance on the use of data holdings. In addition, ASDC provides "value-added" capabilities such as subsetting data products and data visualization and tools to assist users in obtaining and working with the data products. Some of the key features of these tools available from the ASDC follow. Several tools for searching and ordering available data products are provided. These include the Langley Web Ordering Tools in Java and HTML and the EOS Data Gateway (EDG) tool which is a multi-DAAC ordering system. Subsetting of the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) is integrated directly into the Java ordering tool and subsetting of Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) data products is available once an EDG order is placed. The capability to quickly and easily download select data products from the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Core System (ECS) Data Pool is also available. Several tools are available to aid the user in visualizing specific data products. The on-line MISR Browse Tool provides quick and easy search capabilities to view MISR browse images with a few "clicks" of a mouse. The misr_view tool is written in IDL and was developed for MISR and AirMISR data products (HDF-EOS "Grid") to allow selection of specified orbits, paths or observational dates and to enable translation between these modes of identification. The misr_view tool supports simultaneous viewing of 3 data planes and colorizes different planes having different native number types and spatial resolution. This tool was developed by and is distributed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The view-hdf tool is written in Interactive Data Language (IDL) for use with the CERES data products to allow selection and subsetting of variables within the data structures, to render two and three-dimensional graphics, to plot geolocated data onto various map projections and to export data to a file in ASCII or HDF format. The view_hdf tool was developed by the CERES Data Management Team (DMT). The Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT) Level 2 Viewer is written in IDL and was provided by the MOPITT DMT to create plots of data from MOPITT Level 2 files. The Virtual Global Explorer and Observatory (vGeo) Software was developed by VRCO, Inc and provides an immersive 3-D environment. This 3-D visualization capability can be used as a tool to combine and visually analyze data from multiple sources (e.g., model, airborne and ground based measurements and satellite observations). vGeo's capability to merge measurements with model, aircraft and other data fields in a 3-D world allows a more realistic contextual representation of the model/measurement results. Information about all of the available data products, tools and services can be found at the ASDC web site, http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov