Prototyping the Multi-Sensor Interdisciplinary Water Cycle Data Portal

The water cycle research community has generated many regional to global scale products using data from individual NASA missions or sensors (e.g., TRMM, AMSR-E); multiple ground- and space-based data sources (e.g., Global Precipitation Climatology Project [GPCP] products); and sophisticated data assimilation systems (e.g., Land Data Assimilation Systems [LDAS]). However, it is often difficult to access, explore, merge, analyze, and inter-compare these data in a coherent manner due to issues of data resolution, format, and structure. The goal of a future WCDP is to reduce the time and resources spent by scientists on data management and, thus, facilitate water cycle research, by providing easy access to, and cross-data set manipulation tools for, a community-driven inventory of water cycle products. The goal of the Water Cycle Data Portal (WCDP) prototype is to integrate existing data management components relevant to multi-sensor data analysis to better understand the challenges and science requirements of a full up WCDP. The WCDP prototype will provide selected, continuous, long-term, multi-sensor NASA and community data records of water cycle components, critical for understanding water cycle variability; and data access and analysis capabilities that will enable comprehensive research studies. Through a single portal, the WCDP prototype will provide the following resources and capabilities: - Quick and easy search and access of selected multi-sensor data sets. - Selected global and regional water cycle parameters derived from multiple NASA missions and data assimilation systems. - Multi-parameter data subsetting, manipulation, analysis, and display tools. - Access to all input and derived water cycle data (data lineage). The WCDP infrastructure is designed to enable the easy addition and integration of new capabilities and data (e.g., those from the upcoming Global Precipitation Mission [GPM] and Soil Moisture Active Passive [SMSP] mission). Ties and potential collaborations will continue to be explored between the WCDP and other related efforts, including NEWS (NASA Energy and Water Cycle Study), GEWEX (Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment), WaterNET, CRDC (Climate Rainfall Data Center), and CUAHSI (Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science).