2002 Annual

Tuesday, 15 January 2002
Climate Data at NASA Goddard Earth Sciences DAAC
George N. Serafino, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD; and S. P. Ahmad
Poster PDF (110.2 kB)
To improve our understanding of seasonal-to-interannual and decadal-to-multidecadal climate variability and for the detection of anthropogenic climate change, long-term global datasets of key climate parameters are needed.

The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) has a vast collection of climate data from several important satellite-based missions and projects such as MODIS, SeaWiFS, CZCS, TRMM, TOMS, GOME, SBUV, BUV, LIMS, UARS, ACRIM, AVHRR and TOVS Pathfinders, GPCP, and DAO.

The GES DISC DAAC long-term data collections consists of data from the major climate related disciplines such as atmospheric dynamics, atmospheric chemistry, global land and ocean biosphere, and hydrological sciences. Some of the key parameters included are: reflected and emitted radiance, solar irradiance, aerosol, ozone and other trace gases (e.g. SO2, CH4, CO, CLO, HNO3, CFCL3, NOx), temperature and humidity profiles, total precipitable water vapor, cloud parameters, precipitation, vegetation index, sea surface temperature, ocean chlorophyll and other sea sediment concentrations, zonal and meridional winds, heat and moisture fluxes, and numerous assimilated fields. Well-known climatologies such as Legates Surface & Ship Observations of Precipitation from 1920-1980 and Jaeger Precipitation from 1931 to 1965, and data from several field campaigns are also part of the data collections.

In addition, 70 climate parameters selected from over 24 important climate data sets from the Goddard DAAC and other archive sites (e.g. NOAA, GISS, CDIAC), have been mapped on uniform spatial (1x1 degree) and temporal scales (monthly means) and made available on CDROM and via anonymous FTP for interdisciplinary studies and environmental applications. This Climatology Interdisciplinary Data Collection CDROM, developed in collaboration with George Mason University's Center for Earth Observing and Space Research, has been popular in the educational as well as Earth System Science research communities. Easy-to-use software provided for data display and analysis has facilitated the use of the data in various Earth Science projects, in particular in the study of ozone depletion, changes in land-cover and land-use, and long-term trends and correlations of different climate parameters.

In the future, data from missions such as QuikTOMS, EOS Aqua (AIRS, MODIS), EOS Aura (MLS, HIRDLS, OMI), SORCE, Triana, and possibly several Earth Science System Pathfinders (ESSP) will also be available from the DAAC.

To facilitate the use of multiyear data sets, a number of tools and server-side capabilities for data access, visualization, subsetting, and analysis have been developed at the DAAC.

The fundamental climate data sets, as well as special products such as regional subsets, applications products in Geographic Information System (GIS) compatible format, related ancillary data sets, and data analysis tools are freely available to the public for Earth System Science studies, environmental applications, and educational use. Detailed information pertaining to the availability of climate data sets is available from the Web site http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/.

This presentation will provide highlights of the climate data available from the Goddard DAAC, including several data applications, and the services provided by the DAAC Data Support Teams (DST's) in support of the users of the data.

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