Data Management for Arctic Research Field Projects: Progress and Prospects

Integration of multidisciplinary data from a variety of field projects is particularly critical to the timely and accurate understanding of the rapid changes that are now underway in the Arctic. The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) Joint Office for Science Support (JOSS) is involved in the data management support for several ongoing and planned field projects in this region. In addition, work is underway at JOSS on committees and programs to further improve the collection, archival, display and dissemination of Arctic data.

An integrated data management strategy is important to assure that complete data archives are provided to the project scientists and the larger science community in a timely and efficient manner. This paper discusses the components of this strategy and how it impacts every aspect of data collection, archival and dissemination.

It is clear that the field projects benefit from consideration and implementation of sound data management procedures and protocols before any data are collected. This includes the specification of a data policy, consideration of data format and documentation guidelines that maximize the ease of data exchange and archival. JOSS has implemented a data management system that offers scientists a means to submit their data identify and download other datasets of interest, display selected datasets on-line and update dataset and documentation as necessary during the life of the project.

The details of the data system will be described in the context of how it supports the arctic researcher. This includes the ability to display and download datasets on-line and extract parameters from different datasets and create new composite datasets. These capabilities are critical to support a number of Arctic regional data and model intercomparison efforts now underway or planned for the future. A new effort to create a Polar Science Data Management System will be discussed. Emerging capabilities in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) will be described and how they are being implemented for Arctic data analysis and information exchange.