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GOSIC works with GEO Portal to provide climate information
The Global Observing Systems Information Center (GOSIC) is an on-line data portal established in response to the global climate observing community’s need for better access to observational climate data and information.
GOSIC’s goal is to provide access to a worldwide set of observations and derived products. Its unique value lies in its ability to quickly link users via a consistent and user-friendly interface to a wide range of data sets residing at multiple data centers. It provides users with links to data, metadata, other search tools, and related climate observing information.
Following GOSIC’s initial development and implementation at the University of Delaware in the USA from 1997-2006, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) assumed operational responsibility for it on behalf of the international climate observing and data user communities.
The GOSIC portal
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To learn more about the GCOS Essential Climate Variables, please visit our website. |
The GOSIC portal does not itself hold data. Instead, it acts as a data access service by providing a common access point to global and regional data sets and analyses for use in various aspects of climate research. The portal maintains metadata and links to data centers to access data and information.
GOSIC, in partnership with NASA, uses the agency’s Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) to provide users with metadata on a variety of global observational data sets. The GOSIC portal seeks to (1) provide a capability to search on the Internet for data and information across the data centers of all participating global observing systems; (2) return results regardless of data format or where data are located; (3) provide results in a standard, easy-to-read, and easy-to-understand format; (4) allow users to determine the type and quality of data through documentation provided by participating data centers; and (5) allow users to easily obtain related data sets.
The structure of GOSIC provides users with tailored views that cannot be obtained by using generic Internet search engines such as Google™. Content and links are verified and kept up-to-date with input from various data centers. GOSIC also provides specific portal support for the World Data Center for Meteorology, Asheville, based at NCDC.
Diagrams and matrices
A unique GOSIC product is the provision of data flow diagrams for several climate observing programs, such as the GCOS Surface Network; these diagrams walk users through data transmission paths for several atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial climate observing systems (including hot links to data centers). This array of data access tools allows users to search for data in a number of ways, including by program, theme, variable, key word, and data center.
Finally, several matrices have been designed to provide quick overviews and access to data. One such matrix provides users with access to global datasets via the Global Climate Observing system (GCOS) set of 44 Essential Climate Variables (ECV). Given the importance of the ECVs to a number of climate monitoring applications, the matrix has already been helpful to a number of users.
In 2008, GOSIC began working with the GEO portal to aid in providing comprehensive and coordinated Earth observations from thousands of services, instruments, collections, libraries, and catalogues worldwide to transform the collected data into vital information for societal use. The GOSIC data registry now is available on the GEO portal at to aid in accessing data related to eight of GEO’s nine societal benefit areas: agriculture, biodiversity, climate, disasters, ecosystems, health, water, and weather (the ninth GEO societal benefit area, energy, was not included, as GOSIC has neither the relevant thematic expertise nor any energy-related dataset information at this time).
For more detailed information on the GOSIC, please see the following article: Diamond, H. J., and C. J. Lief (2009), A Comprehensive Data Portal for Global Climate Information, Eos Trans. AGU, 90(39), doi:10.1029/2009EO390001 at http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009EO390001.shtml
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