NOAA's climate database modernization program - a decade of data rescue and modernization activities

The Climate Database Modernization Program (CDMP) supports NOAA's mission to collect, integrate, assimilate and effectively manage Earth observations on a global scale, ranging from atmospheric, weather, and climate observations to oceanic, coastal, and marine life observations. Many of NOAA's holdings were originally recorded on paper, film, and other fragile media, and stored at various facilities. CDMP's mission includes transforming these older observations to a more useful friendly and accessible digital media which will help meet the predicted demand for additional scientific baseline observations. Many significant decisions on future energy use, climate and infrastructure issues will depend on the accuracy and availability of this data for predictive modeling. Millions of pieces of data are still waiting to be digitized, the scientific community depends on the on-going work of CDMP to ensure that the hard-earned, irreplaceable research is protected, preserved and made available on-line. CDMP partners with four private sector contractors and has placed online over 53 million weather and environmental images, available to researchers around the world via the Internet. The amount of data online has grown from 1.75 terabytes in 2001 to over 11 terabytes in 2009. This presentation will highlight various NOAA national and international data rescue projects under the CDMP program.