I know this is not much of a newsstory in the US, but in Europe where operational meteorological data have historically been treated as merchandise outside the WMO familiy you may find it interesting that the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (METNO) recently made all its meteorological data freely available. This applies to data that the METNO owns, not data received through GTS or from e.g. ECMWF, EUMETSAT or UKMO. However, it implies that data from the Arctic meteorological stations Jan Mayen, Bjørnøya and Hopen is freely available along with NWP output from the HIRLAM model.

That was the positive news, on the downside it should be mentioned that most data only are available in propriatary file formats not suited for exchange or analysis (they have more in common with encryption than data exchange file formats ). We do however work on creating flexible data transformation tools (reformat, reproject, subset, etc) as well as interfacing NWP formats through OpeNDAP.

Some of the NWP data (surface fields only) are available through our WMS server at http://openmetoc.met.no/. Our historical archive of in situ measurements is available through http://eklima.met.no/. Unfortunately this has only a Norwegian language interface, but it should be useful to the Scandinavian community at least. An we are working on a service system based upon WMO Information System technology.

Good to hear this Øystein.

There seems to be a trend to more open data access in europe. I would like to think that IPY is one large impetus for that trend.

-m.

I think this is a consequence of a new EU-directive, INSPIRE that came into effect 14 March 2007. The purpose of the directive is to ensure access to public georeferenced information. A transition period of 12 years from the start in 2007 is defined, but it may be a better choice to adapt as soon as possible instead of waiting until the end of the transition period. At least when the purpose is interoperability

I think there are many activities focusing at free or open data access and interoperability currently. There are efforts through IPY, through WMO, EU, GEO, etc. How different are the various purposes and implementations? It seems to me as all these parallel initiatives gives a good reason to wait implementing any of them and rather wait until the (technical) details of all are known - that may take some time…

Does anyone know the implications of the various initiatives? Are they listed for comparison anywhere?

Those are big issues Øystein: data policy and interoperability.

On Data Policy, I would say CODATA is one of the leaders. The Data Science Journal recently had a special issue on open data. Paul Uhlir has an introduction entitled “Open Data for Global Science: A Review of Recent Developments in National and International Scientific Data Policies and Related Proposals”.

CODATA is taking the lead on a specific task for GEOSS on data policy too. Paul and Bob Chen produced a draft white paper that they presented to the GEOSS Architecture and Data Committee (ADC) last month. I believe the white paper is being revised based on feedback from the ADC, but I don’t know the current status. Perhaps Paul or Bob can chime in.

Regarding interoperability, I think GEOSS is making a some advancement here, through their Standards and Interoperability Registry and Standards and Interoperability Forum (SIF).

The theory behind the registry and forum is that if people and organizations declare how they operate and the standards they use then partnerships and arrangements can be established and these arrangements can grow over time. I have the same philosophy for the IPYDIS. We need to establish small partnerships between projects (e.g CADIS and DAMOCLES) and then let those extend to other IPY partners. This is a small bite size approach that doesn’t require waiting for all the dust to settle (which it may never do).

GEOSS also has been encouraging a variety of interoperability pilot projects. OGC, IEEE, INSPIRE, and others have worked to create a series of these pilot demos around a variety of themes. There was a polar focussed pilot in Yellowknife in August.

The idea is that as these pilots are developed and implemented, they should register their activities through the SIF, but that still needs more work. Siri Jodha Singh Khalsa chairs the SIF and can say more. I believe the SIF still seeks a cryospheric representative. We certainly need to ensure there is IPY players on the SIF.

Finally, the OGC Interoperability Institute wants to work with us to enhance interoperability. More on that in a separate post.

-m.

The Norwegian Space Centre has invited to a meeting next week where principles for international data exchange will be discussed. A summary of the CODATA draft was attached to the invitation. I think I will join in for this discussion.

I think this depends on the community you come from. Within the meteorological community operational data usually imply that data are available at regular intervals, with a certain quality contrary to experimental data that may be available with an uncertain quality or only for a specific experiment (limited time period) which make them useless for operational services that cover a long time period. However, operational data may be understood differently in different communities.