A Prototype for Earth Science Data on Demand

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is the nation's archive for satellite, radar, model, and in-situ observational data. Today, the archive is almost one petabyte of data including the Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES), Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), and the Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) data. Furthermore, with the addition of new observational satellite data from NASA's Earth Observing System, data volumes at NCDC are projected to reach 50 petabytes by 2010. Since NCDC will experience data access issues never before seen, this proposal provides a workable distributed data access and client side, format neutral "data-on-demand" prototype; leveraging leading edge technologies assembled in a unique operational prototype system. We propose to develop multiple mechanisms for distributed data access, analysis, visualization, product generation and subsetting. We will implement a pilot system, developed by integrating data description, data transport, and data mining methodologies currently available which require minimal resources to implement. We will use data server software from the Open Source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OPeNDAP), along with an extension of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) called the Earth Science Markup Language (ESML) to implement a prototype of distributed access to model, satellite, radar and observational data by distributed users and applications. Portions of this pilot system will be modeled after NOAA Operational Model Archive and Distribution System (NOMADS). This project leverages existing collaborations already established at NCDC including NOMADS, and the new Environmental Research Consortium (ERC), as well as previous National Science Foundation (NSF) proposals to demonstrate advanced host-side data manipulation capabilities.