Arctic Project Support and Data Management Activities at NCAR's Earth Observing Laboratory

The National Center for Atmospheric Science (NCAR) Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) provides multi-disciplinary international field project support to the scientific community. This support includes all aspects of Data Management activities including the development of a strategy for projects of all sizes, web services and the collection, processing, quality control, integration, and archival of project datasets (both research and operational) as well as the long-term data access and stewardship. EOL also provides customized data visualization tools to projects such as the Geographic Information System (GIS) Mapserver and the Field Catalog. The MapServer is an Open Source development environment for building spatially-enabled internet applications and can display and overlay all types of GIS data such as maps, images and vector data interactively on the web. The EOL Field Catalog is a web-based application that allows the project participants to post (and access) operations and mission/scientific reports, operational and preliminary research imagery/products (e.g. satellite, surface, upper air, radar, oceanographic observations), model output fields, and project documentation. The Field Catalog supports real-time data ingest and operational decision making in the field (including aboard ship) as well as providing a 'browse' tool and project summary during the analysis phase of a project.

EOL has provided support to a number of projects in the Arctic for the National Science Foundation (NSF) such as The Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA), The Bering Sea Ecosystem Study (BEST), and The Western Arctic Shelf-Basin Interactions (SBI). Recently, EOL has established the long-term archive of the Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Program for the Arctic Section of the NSF Office of Polar Programs. EOL has lead responsibility for the development of the Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service (CADIS) to support the Arctic Observing Network (AON). EOL continues to work with the scientific community on the design and support of new arctic projects.

An overview of EOL's project support and data management activities on behalf of NSF sponsored Arctic research projects will be presented. There have been a number of lessons learned over the years about developing, implementing, and providing project support to handle remarkably diverse disciplinary data types and providing customized support to projects and individual investigators.