An Advanced Next Generation Archival and Distribution System for Global Atmospheric Science Research

NASA's Atmospheric Science Data Center at the NASA Langley Research Center has developed a new state- of-the-art data archival, and distribution system to serve the atmospheric sciences data provider and user communities. The new system, called Archive - Next Generation (ANGe), is replacing a large-scale science data management system, and is designed with a distributed, multi-tier, serviced-based, message oriented architecture enabling new methods for searching, accessing, and customizing data. The previous system required a user to actively manage a session in a web browser to sequentially search for and obtain data. The ANGe system is architected to allow programmatic calls to the archive via web services to obtain multiple data sets of interest to the user. The ANGe system is currently supporting Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) and Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) data ingest, archival and distribution. In the future it will support CERES on National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). Potential enhancements to this new system are web service access to the archive improving the user's ability to utilize multiple data sets managed at different locations via a Grid/Cloud computing environment. This technology distributes computationally intensive data processing for large data sets, and greatly improves the efficiency of extracting smaller pieces of data of interest to a specific study. Geospatial metadata can be managed in a PostGIS-enabled database, allowing for integration with mainstream GIS utilities and applications. The Atmospheric Science Data Center proposes to produce custom value-added data products and tailoring access to information and data to meet the needs of a diverse user community. Details of these new data access tools and capabilities, and potential enhancements will be discussed. The Atmospheric Science Data Center in Langley's Science Directorate leads NASA's program for the processing, archival and distribution of Earth science data in the areas of radiation budget, clouds, aerosols, and tropospheric chemistry. The Data Center was established in 1991 to support NASA's Earth Observing System and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. It is unique among NASA data centers in the size of its archive, cutting edge computing technology, and full range of data services. For more information regarding ASDC data holdings, documentation, tools and services, visit http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov