Custom on-demand and data access services for news merged A-Train data
Hook Hua, Eric J. Fetzer, Steven Lewis, Mathew Henderson, Alexandre Guillaume, Seungwon Lee, Manuel de la Torre Juárez, Van Dang, Amy Braverman · 2010
To simplify access to large and complex satellite data sets for climate analysis and model verification, we developed a web service tool that is used to study long-term and global-scale trends in climate, water and energy cycle, and weather variability. A related NASA Energy and Water Cycle Study (NEWS) task has created a merged NEWS Level 2 data from multiple instruments in NASA's A-Train constellation of satellites. We used this data to enable creation of climatologies that include correlation between observed temperature, water vapor and cloud properties from the A-Train sensors. Instead of imposing on the user an often rigid and limiting web-based analysis environment, we recognize the need for simple and well-designed distributed services so that users can perform analysis in their own familiar computing environments. A Federated OpenSearch capability with full text + space + time search of data products also facilitated interoperability with other data systems.