Data Management Services Supported by NCAR’s Research Data Archive

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Research Data Archive (RDA; https://rda.ucar.edu) provides open access to a large and diverse collection of meteorological and oceanographic observations, operational and reanalysis outputs, and remote sensing datasets to support atmospheric and geoscience research. The RDA contains greater than 600 dataset collections which support the varying needs of a continually growing and diverse user community. During fiscal year 2017, 13,000 unique users downloaded greater than 2 petabytes of data from the RDA, and customized data products were prepared for more than 50,000 user-driven requests.

This presentation will provide an overview of the data management strategies employed to support scalable access to the RDA data holdings. Topics will include data volume reduction strategies that are implemented to meet user needs and continue to make data consumable over the web. Structured data citation policies are put in place to enable reproducible research and maintain a strong data provenance. A robust metadata database is maintained to support a range of data search and discoverability mechanisms, and secure and reliable data transfer is supported by Globus access capabilities integrated into the RDA portal. A discussion of future directions and strategies to adapt to emerging technologies will also be included.