As data acquisition techniques advance, enormous quantities of data are gathered and stored. Often this storage is located at a great distance from the actual location of the scientists. Furthermore storage space itself is distributed geographically. These circumstances require special solutions to ensure scientific access to the data. This article will focus on this matter from the perspective of atmospheric research.
The measurements of earth observation instruments are important input for climate- and weather models and are used for research on atmospheric composition and climate. These instruments, mounted on earth orbiting satellites, produce Tera to Peta byte archives, distributed over several archiving sites.
This introduces two problems for the individual scientist: How to find the information needed in these vast archives and, if the data of interest is found, how to process these Tera bytes of data into usable parameters?
WJ Som de Cerff, J van de Vegte, RM van Hees. Data access for atmospheric research
Year: 2002