Data support system and services for NEESPI

Principal Investigator: Dr. Gregory Leptoukh, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Co-Investigator: Dr. Ivan A. Csiszar (University of Maryland, Department of Geography)

Co-Investigator: Dr. Peter Romanov (University of Maryland/ESSIC)

This project aims to provide data management of NASA remote sensing data for Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI), which has as its foci issues in northern Eurasia that are relevant to regional and global scientific and decision-making communities. Many types of remote sensing and ground data are needed and many models must be applied, adapted or developed for properly understanding the functioning of Northern Eurasia "cold" and diverse regional system. Mechanisms for obtaining the requisite data sets and models and sharing them among the participating scientists are essential.

The project targets integration of remote sensing data from AVHRR, MODIS, and other NASA instruments on board US-satellites (with potential expansion to data from non-US satellites), customized data products from climatology data sets (e.g., ISCCP, ISLSCP) and model data (e.g., NCEP/NCAR) into a single, well-architected data management system. It utilizes two existing components developed by the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC): (1) online archiving and distribution system (TRL 6), that allows collection, processing and ingest of data from various sources into distributed online archives, and (2) user-friendly intelligent web-based online visualization and analysis system (TRL 8). The former includes various kinds of data preparation for seamless interoperability between measurements by different instruments. The latter provides convenient access to various geophysical parameters measured in the Northern Eurasia region without any need to learn complicated remote sensing data formats, or retrieve and process large volumes of NASA data.

Initial implementation concentrated on atmospheric data and surface data aggregated to coarse resolution to support collaborative environment and climate change studies and modeling, while at later stages, data from NASA and non-NASA satellites at higher resolution will be integrated into the system.