ECMWF is hosting an international workshop on a planned Climate Data Store which is to form a key part of the EU-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
The workshop, taking place from 3 to 6 March, will explore user expectations and existing web-based data service solutions.
It is one of the first milestones in the development of C3S, which is expected to become operational in 2018.
The service is being implemented by ECMWF as part of the EU’s Copernicus Earth Observation Programme. It is intended to provide European stakeholders, including public authorities, businesses and citizens, with access to authoritative information about climate change and its impact on society.
The Climate Data Store will lie at the very heart of the service: accessible to users via the web, it will hold extensive data on dozens of climate variables, such as temperature, precipitation, sea level and ice sheets.
Reanalyses, observations and simulations will be used to provide information on the past, present and future climate. The datasets will come from a variety of sources and will vary greatly in size. One of the topics the workshop will discuss is how to present the data in a consistent and user-friendly form.
ECMWF will contribute data obtained from its climate reanalysis programme
“An important feature of the store will be the interoperability of the data, resulting from the application of international standards,” says Baudouin Raoult, one of the organisers of the workshop.
In practice, this will enable users to combine different variables, such as anticipated sea level and temperature, into consistently presented datasets, maps or charts.
The needs of different user groups will also have to be considered. As Baudouin points out, users ranging from scientists to policy makers may prefer to work with different formats, such as raw data on the one hand and highly processed charts on the other. One of the aims of the workshop is to better identify these various needs and their impact on the design of the store.
The next C3S workshop, on climate projections, will take place from 20 to 21 April, followed by a workshop on climate observation requirements from 29 June to 3 July.
ECMWF is also implementing the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). C3S and CAMS are two of the six services which make up the EU’s Copernicus Earth Observation Programme.