Antarctic meteorological data: Access, distribution, and challenges

Antarctic meteorological data has its own distinctive challenges when it comes to acquisition, access, and distribution. The unique situation of the Antarctic Treaty, United States Antarctic Program data policy, and Antarctic community lend to an environment of data availability, sharing and cooperation not often equaled in other sectors of the meteorological world. This presentation will cover the data sets, the distribution systems and challenges faced in Antarctic meteorological community. The data holdings of the Antarctic Meteorological Research Center (AMRC) at the University of Wisconsin and other Antarctic data centers are outlined. The debut of a new AMRC data portal is unveiled. In addition, the Antarctic Internet Data Distribution (Antarctic-IDD) System using Unidata's Local Data Manager (LDM) is reviewed. Future distribution systems that are in progress and showing promise are discussed including use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS), geographically enabled database systems (e.g. PostgreSQL), and next generation data server systems (e.g. Unidata's Repository for Archiving, Managing and Accessing Diverse Data or RAMADDA). Challenges such as the funding of data archives and systems, and the publishing of data along with ever increasing requirements for a researcher to have a data plan will be touched upon in the presentation as well.