ATMOSPHERIC DATA ACCESS FOR THE GEOSPATIAL USER COMMUNITY (ADAGUC)

Historically the atmospheric and meteorological communities are separate worlds, with their own data formats and tools for data handling, which makes sharing of these data with the geospatial communities difficult and cumbersome. These information sources are becoming of increasing interest outside of these communities at present, because of the continuously improving spatial and temporal resolution of e.g. model and satellite data and the interest in historical datasets. New user communities that use geographically based datasets in a cross-domain manner are emerging. This development is supported by the progress made in Geographical Information System (GIS) software. The current GIS software is not yet ready for the wealth of atmospheric data, although the faint outlines of new generation software are already visible: support of HDF, NetCDF and an increased understanding of temporal issues are only a few of the hints. To aid in this trend, the ADAGUC project aims to reduce the need for scientists to invent their own converter tools. Selected space borne atmospheric datasets will be made accessible for GIS software. Both the geospatial and the atmospheric user communities are involved intensively in the project, to obtain a high fitness for use. The deliverables of this project are: Open Source conversion tools, selected atmospheric datasets in a GIS-friendly format and a web service to demonstrate the usability of the above to the geospatial and atmospheric community. Dissemination of the results is pursued through publications, workshops and (inter)national cooperation.