Enhancing access to climate model metadata via a web-accessible database

The Climate and Global Dynamics Division (CGD) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) wants to provide the greatest possible public access to their research databases to share their climate model metadata. CGD recognized that the information from their climate model runs could be better organized to allow for efficient discovery, analysis, and sharing of the research metadata. A number of factors were identified, including insufficient information in the data files to adequately describe the data and the difficulty of generating catalogs of the experiments and data. Metadata is information that identifies and describes the contents of the research data. A web-accessible metadata database was developed to enhance climate model metadata organization and accessibility. Using the spiral software development method, database design and creation was done in an iterative process with rapid reviews of each design to test and ensure that the final product satisfied the user's requirements.

The database was designed to meet a specific set of requirements from CGD to store metadata from the Community Climate System Model (CCSM). A web application created a browser-based interface to the database that acts as a catalog for users to locate and sort the metadata in an online browser. Previously, CGD developers manually created a static website containing the metadata that proved to be time consuming and difficult to maintain. This project's web-accessible database enhances CGD's ability to share their metadata with the public, making their climate model results accessible to a much wider audience.