Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC)Strategic Plan

Tom BodenDirector

Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis CenterOak Ridge National Laboratory

Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831-6335bodenta@ornl.gov

August 2004

Table of Contents

Introduction ………………………………………………………………… 3

Strategic Goals ……………………………………………………………… 5

Immediate Actions …………………………………………………………. 8

Present and Future Data Activities ……………………………………….. 10Present CDIAC Data Emphasis and Activities …….…………….. 10CDIAC Core Data Projects ……………………………………….. 10

Long-term Climate Observations ……………………….... 11Atmospheric Levels of Greenhouse Gases ……………….. 11Anthropogenic CO2 Emission Estimates …………………. 12

Project-specific Data Support …………………………………….. 13Oceans ………………………………………………………. 13AmeriFlux ………………………………………………….. 14NARSTO ………………………………………………….... 15FACE ……………………………………………………….. 16Terrestrial Carbon Sequestration ………………………… 17

Orphaned Data Sets ……………………………………………….. 17

Coordination and Outreach ………………………………………………. 18 Coordination of Data Activities with ARM ……………………… 18

CDIAC Outreach ………………………………………………….. 18Data and Information Request/Response/Records ……………… 19

CDIAC Computing Infrastructure ………………………………………. 19

Summary …………………………………………………………………… 20

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Introduction

Since 1982, the Climate Change Research Division (CCRD) in DOE’s Office of Science has funded and managed the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. CDIAC’s mission is to provide information for evaluating complex environmental issues, including potential climate change associated with elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other radiatively active trace gases. In the future, CDIAC will continue to provide comprehensive data management services to address the nation’s environmental concerns, help satisfy CCRD’s long-term Climate Change Research measures (http://www.sc.doe.gov/measures/SUBPAGES/ber/BER_LTmeasures.htm),

and support the data needs of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). We envision CDIAC serving as a central data provider for the North American Carbon Program (NACP) and its’ regional intensives, providing data streams tailored for data assimilation and “grid” modeling efforts, assembling multi-disciplinary databases necessary for multi-scale synthesis studies, and continuing to add value to data sets essential for climate change research.

CDIAC maintains approximately 300 databases fundamental to climate change research and covering most disciplines engaged in climate change research. Several of the data sets available from CDIAC are truly landmark databases not available anywhere else. Among these landmark databases are the ongoing Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 record dating back to the late 1950s and CDIAC’s own fossil-fuel CO2 emission time series. To date, CDIAC’s efforts in building a data collection have focused on quantifying components of the global carbon cycle, particularly long-term trends in atmospheric levels of CO2 and anthropogenic releases of CO2 to the atmosphere, providing long-term climate records suitable for detection of a greenhouse-gas induced climate change, and amassing ocean carbonate measurements capable of documenting potential changes in the ocean carbon reservoir. The popularity of CDIAC’s data holdings is evident from the fact CDIAC’s Web site (http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov) receives nearly 600,000 visits annually with annual viewings exceeding 3 million CDIAC Web pages.

CDIAC does more than simply archive data and make them available from a Web site or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server as the name “Information Analysis Center” implies. CDIAC performs all facets of research data management. CDIAC assembles new databases, analyzes databases and publishes scientific results, compiles metadata, and develops computing tools. CDIAC adds value to data submitted by individual scientists and research programs. CDIAC evaluates the quality of submitted data using a variety of techniques (e.g., standard statistical tests, use by models, intercomparison with related data sets) and interacts with the contributing scientist or program to make corrections or document caveats. CDIAC not only evaluates data but also metadata, including data documentation and important ancillary data sets (e.g., station histories). CDIAC prepares additional documentation, with an aim of satisfying the “20-year test”, when necessary to improve data understanding and widen data applicability. CDIAC reprocesses data to provide data in easy-to-use formats, satisfy modeling requirements, support synthesis exercises, or respond to individual requests. CDIAC develops computing tools and programs to aid users and to improve data quality.

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Data analysis is central to CDIAC’s mission and future. CDIAC analyzes data to address research questions, evaluate national and international policy, test models, and to assess data quality. Examples of recent analyses by CDIAC staff using CDIAC data holdings and compilations include developing finer spatial and temporal anthropogenic carbon emission estimates for the U.S. (Blasing et al. 2004), evaluating forest responses to volcanic eruptions (Gu et al. 2003), summarizing emission inventories for international discussions (http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/emis/annex.htm), and characterizing the current state of the ocean carbonate system (Sabine et al. 2004).

The breadth of CDIAC’s technical expertise, coupled with the ability to readily draw on additional relevant expertise at ORNL, has enabled CDIAC to handle and assemble data from many areas of climate change research and will enable the data center to assist many of the planned multidisciplinary activities of future and evolving climate change programs. This strategic plan outlines our present data activities, lists anticipated data products, and identifies areas where data support is needed and how CDIAC can contribute.

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Strategic Goals

The major strategic goals (●) and anticipated products (-) for CDIAC in support of DOE CCRD and the CCSP are to:

● Quantify sources and sinks of energy-related gases, especially carbon dioxide (CO2) and anthropogenic sources of CO2, on spatial and temporal scales necessary to satisfy CCSP goals.

- Monthly fossil-fuel CO2 emission time series for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico- U.S. state-level fossil-fuel CO2 emission time series- National, historical land-use CO2 emission time series- Atmospheric isotopic (13C/C12, 18O/O16, O2/N2) measurements

● Deliver improved climate data for modeling purposes and for policy makers attempting to determine safe levels of greenhouse gases for the Earth system.

- NetCDF and gridded versions of large CDIAC climate databases (e.g., GHCN)- Web interfaces to facilitate climate data “querying”- Regional trends analyses of sunshine duration, cloudiness, and snowfall

● Develop information on the North American carbon budget, global carbon cycle, land cover and use, and biological/ecological processes by helping to quantify net emissions of CO2, thereby improving the evaluation of carbon sequestration strategies and alternative response options.

- Monthly fossil-fuel CO2 emission time series for North America- State and provincial-level NA fossil-fuel CO2 emission time series- North American historical land-use CO2 emission time series- NA flux site characterizations (carbon stocks, land use histories)- Network-wide AmeriFlux and FACE databases for North America- Terrestrial carbon sequestration data repository

● Contribute towards an integrative and diagnostic modeling effort incorporating in-situ terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric data into a synthesis of carbon fluxes.

- Gap-filled and adjusted, continuous AmeriFlux time series- Network-wide AmeriFlux and FACE databases- Ocean sulfate aerosol database- Global Ocean Data Project (GLODAP) database- Central, relational CDIAC “ocean carbonate database”

● Support short-term (i.e., atmospheric transport) and long-term (i.e., interannual variability) data assimilation modeling efforts.

- Assemble data streams for data assimilation models (e.g., atmospheric isotopic CO2

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measurements, VOS underway pCO2 measurements, monthly fossil-fuel CO2

emission time series)- North American Carbon Program (NACP) Data Management Plan

● Increase knowledge of the interactions among emissions, long-range atmospheric transport, and transformations of atmospheric pollutants, and their response to air quality management strategies.

● Expand data/information capabilities while maintaining and updating existing databases and data products.

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Immediate Actions

The following identifies immediate actions to be taken by CDIAC aimed at accomplishing the strategic goals stated above.

● Identify new value-added products and data needed by CCSP, including the North American Carbon Program (NACP), through interactions with modelers, policymakers, and stakeholders to better meet the needs of the end-users of climate change data.

● Inventory the aerosol data requirements, including ocean sulfate aerosols, of the major climate, atmospheric inversion, and carbon cycle models to evaluate whether CDIAC can aid these modeling efforts and their treatment of aerosols by processing or furnishing specific aerosol data products.

● Develop and employ enhanced automation techniques, including mirroring technologies, to improve CDIAC’s ability to rapidly and efficiently maintain and update the current CDIAC data collection.

● Identify data needs of new or evolving DOE CCRD research programs (e.g., Atmospheric Sciences Program) and develop data management options and strategies for these programs in order to better serve DOE and the larger climate change research community.

● Make previously unavailable “classic” data sets, such as Dave Keeling’s long-term atmospheric carbon isotope measurements, available from CDIAC. These classic data sets will improve understanding of the global carbon cycle budget, provide needed constraints for modeling exercises, and preserve data treasures soon to be lost or lessened due to an inability to capture companion metadata.

● Identify the core data sets, presently unavailable, vital to a national terrestrial carbon sequestration data repository to aid carbon sequestration and mitigation strategy efforts in terrestrial systems.

● Incorporate carbon flux measurements from the ARM CART site facility in Oklahoma into the larger AmeriFlux data collection to blend measurements from one of the most intensively monitored sites in the U.S. into a comparable, multi-site network.

●Assist the ARM archive with meteorological definitions and priorities in the context of climate change research in order to make the ARM data collection easier to navigate and more useful to the scientific community and general public.

● Develop a relational database to house CDIAC’s entire data collection, beginning with CDIAC’s underway ocean holdings, to facilitate the development of integration products needed for synthesis activities.

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● Enhance CDIAC’s computing and analytical capabilities by taking advantage of ORNL’s GIS and data visualization capabilities to better serve CDIAC’s many users.

● Convert large climate databases into NetCDF format and gridded formats to support “power users” including climate modelers.

These first steps represent examples of CDIAC’s potential contributions to the climate change research programs. We believe CDIAC will not only provide a tremendous service to users of climate change data but also make significant contributions to climate change research including quantifying and evaluating the spatial and temporal variability of anthropogenic CO2 releases, improving model cloud and aerosol parameterization, and developing rich carbon stock and flux information essential to data assimilation modeling and remote-sensing validation efforts.

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Present and Future Data Activities

The following sections describe CDIAC’s present efforts and planned activities aimed at satisfying the strategic goals mentioned above.

Present CDIAC Data Emphasis and Activities

CDIAC maintains approximately 300 data sets covering a broad spectrum of topics related to the greenhouse effect and climate change. The breadth of CDIAC’s data holdings makes it unique among national and international data centers whose holdings are traditionally discipline specific (e.g., oceanography) rather than environmental issue-oriented. These data have been submitted by scientists, programs, and data centers around the world or compiled directly by CDIAC. CDIAC does not simply accept every available data set into the CDIAC archive. Efforts are made to evaluate the data set to determine its importance to climate change research and to the mission of DOE. This screening process affords users ready access to high-quality data sets fundamental to climate change research and understanding.

Historically the focus of CDIAC’s data efforts have been the assembly of documentation to enhance the utility of data sets for decades, careful quality evaluation, assembly of important data sets, and data analysis in response to fundamental questions. Data and documentation have been made available without charge through CDIAC’s Web site (http://cdiac.ornl.gov), anonymous FTP server, and on other media including floppy diskettes and compact diskettes. CDIAC has also expended resources on outreach and networking products including a newsletter (CDIAC Communications), brochures, glossaries, research summaries, DOE technical reports, and annual reports.

Data residing at CDIAC may be categorized into three primary groups based on source. These sources include 1) core data sets critical to climate change research handled with base CDIAC funding, 2) project data, and 3) orphaned data sets which would be lost if not documented and archived.

The following sections describe CDIAC’s efforts in each of the three data areas and planned activities for the coming years. In addition, other CDIAC focus areas (e.g., networking) are discussed along with future plans, and these plans also address our major strategic goals.

CDIAC Core Data Projects

There are fundamental data sets (e.g., Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 record, global CO2

emission estimates from fossil-fuel consumption) vital to global change research that must be preserved, updated, and available always. CDIAC offers many of these “core” data sets to ensure their long-term availability. These “core” data sets span the major climate change research areas including climate observations, atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, and anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

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Long-term Climate Observations

Over the years CDIAC has emphasized analyzing, documenting, compiling, and presenting long-term climate records suitable for the detection of possible greenhouse gas-induced climate change (i.e., with bias adjustments). These climate records have included cloud observations, temperature and precipitation measurements, snow data, sunshine determinations, and atmospheric pressure records. The CDIAC climate data collection represents some of the largest data sets presently archived at CDIAC. The spatial scale of these records ranges from individual stations to global extent. The temporal resolution of CDIAC’s climate holdings is diverse as well, ranging from hourly records to annual records. Many of the databases presently offered by CDIAC are long-term national data sets for the countries of the world with large land areas. Numerous data sets result from two U.S. DOE bilateral agreements, signed in 1987 and 1995, with the People’s Republic of China Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Meteorological Administration (CMA) and from interactions with NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) through their participation in the bilaterals.

In the near future, CDIAC will focus on improving delivery of our larger, climate holdings by first building a Web interface to access, visualize, and download data from the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (HCN) and Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN). We will also develop codes to translate our large climate databases into NetCDF format and to generate gridded climate databases in order to accommodate “power users” including climate modelers. Regional trends analyses of sunshine duration, cloudiness, and snowfall will continue in the future. CDIAC will interact immediately with climate modelers trying to reduce differences between observed temperatures and model simulations in order to better understand the cloud, radiation, and meteorological data requirements of their models. Based on these interactions with modelers, we will determine whether our climate databases could be modified to better satisfy modeling requirements or if climate and aerosol databases could be assembled to better meet modeling needs. Looking forward CDIAC will continue to maintain and present long-term, global instrumental and ice-core temperature records but will develop scripts to do so in a more automated fashion.

Atmospheric Levels of Greenhouse Gases

Quantifying present and historical abundances of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is fundamental to climate change research. CDIAC has amassed a wealth of high-quality atmospheric measurements of greenhouse gases and reconstructions from ice cores suitable for the evaluating and predicting past, present, and future levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The focus at CDIAC in this area has always been to archive records indicative of background tropospheric levels or records of sufficient length to identify long-term trends in atmospheric levels, with records traceable to calibration standards accepted internationally. CDIAC has not pursued short-term measurements from field campaigns aimed at determining present ambient greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. Several of the data sets available from CDIAC are truly landmark biogeochemical databases not available anywhere else. Among these landmark databases

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are the ongoing Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 record dating back to the late 1950s and the multi-species ALE/GAGE/AGAGE records dating back to the 1970s.

To preserve the world’s largest collection of atmospheric CO2 records CDIAC will continue to maintain, update, and present CO2 records from approximately 100 sites worldwide from major national (e.g., Scripps Institution of Oceanography [SIO], NOAA/CMDL) and international (e.g., CSIRO, CNR) measurement groups and will further develop mirroring and processing scripts to automate the effort. During FY 2004 and FY 2005 CDIAC will process, document, and disseminate four additional “classics” important to further understanding the global carbon cycle budget and constraining carbon cycle models and atmospheric inversion models. These four data sets are 1) Dave Keeling’s long-term measurements of the 13C/C12 and 18O/O16 ratios in atmospheric CO2

from the SIO network, 2) Nobel prize laureate Sherry Rowland and Don Blake’s long-term, multi-species atmospheric database from their latitudinal, intensive field campaigns of the past twenty years, 3) Ralph Keeling’s long-term O2/N2 ratios from the SIO flask sampling network, and 4) Michael Bender’s long-term 18O/O16 ratios from select NOAA/CMDL flask sampling locations. CDIAC will also continue to obtain, maintain, and present atmospheric records of other important species including methane, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halons, and key tracer species (e.g., sulfur hexafluoride).

Anthropogenic CO2 Emission Estimates

One of the critical components of the global carbon cycle is the human perturbation, the extent to which human activities distort the natural stocks and flows of carbon. The single largest human impact on the global carbon cycle is the consumption of fossil fuels and the related release of CO2 to the atmosphere. For nearly 20 years CDIAC has produced an annual estimate of the magnitude of CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel combustion and has made this estimate available to scientists, policymakers, students, and the general public around the world. With increasing interest in the details of these emissions, CDIAC now maintains a database that provides estimates of annual emissions back to the beginning of the fossil-fuel era (about 1750) and includes a break down by country and by fuel. The data set includes emissions from flaring of natural gas and from calcining limestone to make cement. The estimates are based on energy data produced by the United Nations Energy Statistics group and are updated annually. CDIAC has used this primary data set to estimate emissions on a 1 x 1 degree grid of latitude and longitude, to estimate the isotopic signature of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and to produce national and aggregated time series. These emission products are essential to global carbon cycle modeling efforts, atmospheric transport studies, and for evaluation of the Kyoto Protocol (e.g., contrast present national fossil-fuel releases relative to their benchmark 1990 emission commitments).

Because CO2 emissions numbers are now of wide interest, the International Energy Agency in Paris and RIVM in the Netherlands now also make annual estimates of emissions by country and fuel available and many countries provide annual estimates of their own emissions (as required by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change).

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The CDIAC data set is unique in the length of the time series; the fact that it is based on United Nations energy statistics; and the fact that the initial creation, virtually every innovation, and virtually every extension of the estimates to things like isotopic signature are attributable to CDIAC analyses.

CDIAC plans are to continue annual global, regional, and national estimates of CO2 emissions from UN energy data. CDIAC is responding to the need for CO2 emissions estimates at finer spatial and temporal scales. Future fossil-fuel products will include CO2 emission time series for all U.S. states and monthly time series for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. We will collaborate with Bob Andres (University of North Dakota) to produce and make available estimates by month and by major geographic subdivision for the larger, non-US countries. We will explore cement data sources to generate release estimates by month and/or state for cement production. We will continue to work with the UN to improve their energy data set, will maintain and improve our data set on isotopic fossil-fuel signatures, will continue to support efforts by analysts throughout the world to estimate emissions by country or subdivision thereof or by commercial enterprise, will continue to work on improved methods (such as a current effort to improve the way we deal with durable, carbon-containing products like asphalt and lumber), and will make our data available to all.

Project-Specific Data Support

Oceans

The focus of CDIAC’s ocean data activity has been to compile an oceanographic collection for quantifying the amount of carbon stored in the oceans and understanding changes in the ocean carbon pool. DOE funded ocean measurements of pH, total alkalinity, pCO2, and TCO2 as contributions to the larger WOCE and JGOFS oceanographic programs. CDIAC served as the central repository for DOE’s Global Ocean CO2 Survey and along with success in archiving measurements from other agencies and cruises has amassed the world’s largest collection of ocean carbonate chemistry measurements. CDIAC’s ocean data collection consists of DOE-funded measurements and measurements funded by other U.S. agencies, national and international measurements, historical and contemporary measurements, deep water and surface water measurements, and shipbased and shorebased measurements. Despite past successes there is still much to do within CDIAC’s ocean data efforts to further support DOE’s carbon cycle program and long-term climate research objectives, NACP, and international ocean carbon research.

Over the next three years, CDIAC will be actively involved in several national and international oceanographic activities aimed at better understanding the ocean’s role in the global carbon cycle and climate change. CDIAC will serve as the primary data repository for carbon and hydrographic measurements made aboard Volunteer Observing Ships (VOS) making routine voyages across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. CDIAC will support the Global Ocean Data Analysis Project (GLODAP) aimed at unifying the vast measurements made during WOCE, JGOFS and OACES programs of the 1990s to

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elucidate global distributions of natural and anthropogenic inorganic carbon in the oceans. CDIAC will continue to support international efforts to synthesize quality-controlled, robust ocean carbonate measurements by continuing active participation in the CLIVAR International Repeat Hydrography Program, the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES), and the Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS), and by beginning participation in the International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (IOCCP).

In direct support of the NACP and to further expand the CDIAC ocean data collection, we plan to host carbon measurements made in coastal areas off the coast of the US. Target data will include measurements from autonomous sensors positioned in coastal margins, VOS measurements made in shallow waters, and records from select stations occupied during one-time and repeat cruises.

In support of DOE’s climate modeling efforts, CDIAC intends to evaluate the availability and quality of ocean sulfate aerosol data collections to determine whether CDIAC’s ocean data processing and documentation protocols could be used to create an “ocean sulfate aerosol” database or enhance the ocean aerosol data streams for modeling purposes.

CDIAC will invest considerable computing resources to improve access, visualization, and retrieval of CDIAC ocean holdings. Most notable will be the development of a relational database containing all of CDIAC’s ocean data holdings. New Web interfaces will be programmed and existing tools will be embellished to utilize the relational database. CDIAC will continue to serve as a node for NOAA’s Live Access Server (LAS), a Web server which allows distributed data sets from the regional ocean archives to be unified into a comprehensive “virtual” database. CDIAC will continue to offer Ocean Data Viewer (ODV)–compatible files to facilitate data queries and visualization efforts. CDIAC will develop and implement a separate Ocean OME (ORNL Metadata Editor) and Mercury instance to inventory and document the world’s collection of ocean carbon measurements.

CDIAC will continue to publish vital oceanographic data-related publications (e.g., methods handbook) and processing programs and continue efforts to develop and maintain the Ocean Drifters Web site (http://drifters.doe.gov) for DOE. This site summarizes the use of drifter buoys for educational and research purposes under the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP). Data collected by these drifter buoys are archived and disseminated by NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorology Laboratory (AOML).

AmeriFlux

CDIAC has been supported since 1997 to serve as the central repository for water vapor, carbon dioxide, and radiation fluxes made by sites in North, Central, and South America comprising the AmeriFlux network. Since 1997 the number of AmeriFlux sites has grown almost four-fold to over one hundred sites. The focus of the AmeriFlux data

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management effort at CDIAC has been to check measurements submitted to CDIAC by individual sites, develop data processing techniques to aid network-wide synthesis and integration efforts, support model testing and validation of remotely-sensed measurements using AmeriFlux data, build a consistent network-wide AmeriFlux database, assemble detailed site characterizations, develop a Web interface to access AmeriFlux data, and develop and maintain the AmeriFlux Web site (http://public.ornl.gov/ameriflux). CDIAC’s AmeriFlux data efforts are intended to enhance understanding of carbon fluxes, net ecosystem productivity, and carbon sequestration in the terrestrial biosphere.

Future plans to further support the AmeriFlux network and the global flux community, and to improve the utility of AmeriFlux data for NACP, CCSP, and DOE’s long-term mission include developing real-time data streams suitable for ingest by data assimilation models, furnishing data tailored for specific synthesis activities (e.g., quantifying the regional carbon sink for eastern forests), and developing gap-filled and adjusted (e.g., U-star corrected) time series for all individual AmeriFlux sites. We will continue efforts to amass ancillary information for individual AmeriFlux sites, first focusing on the Upper Midwest Region where initial NACP intensives are planned, and to present this information through the Web in useful ways including GIS coverages. We will continue to refine and improve the interface used to access the network-wide AmeriFlux database by incorporating additional querying capabilities (e.g., ecosystem type, instrument type), data and graphics capabilities.

NARSTO (North American Research Strategy in Tropospheric Ozone)

CDIAC operates the Quality System Science Center (QSSC) for NARSTO. The mission of NARSTO is to plan, coordinate, and facilitate comprehensive, long-term, policy-relevant scientific research and assessment of primary and secondary pollutant species (i.e., ozone, particulate matter, and their precursors) emitted, formed, transformed, and transported in the troposphere over the North American continent. QSSC activities include quality systems management, data management and archiving, and project data support. The QSSC maintains a Web site (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/programs/NARSTO/) where users may access NARSTO data, quality management documents, data and metadata reporting tools, and learn more about NARSTO.

NARSTO projects will continue to submit data to the QSSC for permanent archiving at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC). During the next year we will receive data from EPA PM Supersites projects (7 projects total) and Environment Canada’s Pacific 2001 project. Future NARSTO sources of data, over a 2-3 year timeframe, include the Mexico City Metropolitan Area Program, the EPA Supersites Integrated Relational Database, the DOE-NETL Air Quality Database, the Central California Ozone Study (CCOS), and the California Regional Particulate Air Quality Study (CRPAQS).

Future support for projects will see the QSSC interact with NARSTO projects currently submitting data for archiving as well as those NARSTO and ASP projects planning for

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and collecting data. Our goal is to support the complete data lifecycle, from planning through archiving, and encourage the use of our data and metadata reporting resources and tools. We have and will continue to provide data management support to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Particulate Matter (PM) Supersites Program, the Mexico City Metropolitan Area Program, Environment Canada’s Pacific 2001 Project, the NorthEast Oxidant and Particle Study (NEOPS), and TVA data providers for the SOS Nashville 1999 study. We will initiate interactions with and provide support as needed to two new projects, the East Tennessee Ozone Study (ETOS) and the 2005-2006 Texas Air Quality Study (TexAQS II), as well as any new measurement campaigns launched under ASP.

Looking forward, the QSSC will continue to support NARSTO and will offer support to DOE’s restructured Atmospheric Sciences Program (ASP). The NARSTO quality systems management and data management plans will be updated to incorporate the latest national and international quality data management standards and will be made available to scientists funded under the new DOE ASP. Tools developed by the QSSC for NARSTO will be improved and modified for use by ASP investigators and to support ASP data needs. These tools include the Data Exchange Standard (DES) data file submission template, QA/QC computer programs, reference tables for chemical and physical variable names, and a metadata entry form (i.e., the Web-based Data and Information Sharing Tool). To further support ASP, the QSSC will compile a searchable inventory of projects and investigators supported under ASP.

Free-air CO2 Enrichment (FACE)

Unlike the AmeriFlux measurement network, there is no central data repository for FACE sites nor has CDIAC been charged or funded to serve in such a capacity. Most FACE data are available for individual sites from the site investigators or servers maintained by the individual sites. As a service to FACE investigators and the CDIAC user community, CDIAC has archived and makes available data from three FACE sites including the sites at Rhinelander (WI), ORNL (TN), and at Bulls, New Zealand. Aside from minor reformatting and preparation of documentation, the effort to date has been simply to archive the submitted FACE data and to make it available from the CDIAC FTP server and Web site (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/programs/FACE) in their native format. Data from each of the three sites varies in content and duration.

CDIAC will continue to accept, archive and disseminate data from FACE sites, particularly DOE-funded FACE sites. There are eight other FACE sites in the US alone besides those presently submitting data to CDIAC. CDIAC would like to develop a homogenous, network-wide database for the US FACE sites with consistent nomenclature, reporting times, missing value representations, and data flagging schemes. Without a network-wide FACE database, use of FACE measurements for synthesis and scaling efforts is very tedious and difficult. CDIAC would also like to obtain and offer FACE CO2 concentration data to aid analyses and publications where knowledge of the actual elevated CO2 level is essential. Presently authors and analysts must find the information by scouring individual FACE Web sites or by contacting FACE investigators

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directly. In addition, CDIAC would like to develop an interface (e.g., AmeriFlux data project) to a centralized US FACE database to permit users to query, visualize, and download data instead of having to process FACE data from individual sites themselves. Data from the FACE experiments in the United States have been identified as a crucial source of continuous, long-term measurements for the NACP. Our proposed FACE-related data activities would also assist researchers attempting to satisfy one of DOE’s strategic goals of “determining how ecosystems respond to environmental change, developing a theoretical and empirical basis spanning molecular interactions to whole ecosystems” (DOE Office of Science Strategic Plan 2004).

Terrestrial Carbon Sequestration

Another of DOE’s strategic initiatives is to “understand and enhance Nature’s processes for sequestering atmospheric carbon from fossil fuel use.” Data on terrestrial carbon sequestration continues to increase each year. New field experiments are being published and existing field experiments are being updated with recent data and results. Data from hundreds of field experiments have been compiled, analyzed, and published. Several data compilations exist already, and many new ones are expected to be developed. Existing data compilations or data sets are typically ecosystem- or management-specific, and have been compiled from different researchers around the world. Archiving these data centrally at CDIAC would be useful to researchers in the field of carbon cycling and sequestration. The raw data (e.g., soil organic carbon measurements at various depths) from these analyses need to be brought together in a standard format and compiled in a manner that allows efficient access and effective means to query and retrieve needed information. For example, ecosystem modelers might query the database for potential carbon accumulation or loss rates following a specific management in an ecosystem within a climate regime with a particular soil type. The compilation of raw data from global analyses also increases our ability to detect trends between carbon and environmental variables and, hence, propose new and more effective ways to manage terrestrial carbon. We have begun to compile existing data sets and have posted previously published, summarized data on a prototype Web site (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/programs/CSEQ/cseqdata.html). However, what is needed to fully realize the potential of these experimental data is access to the original data; agreements with researchers to provide raw data; and support for CDIAC to compile, complete quality control, and organize the data in a standard form, and analyze the data.

Orphaned Data Sets

Over the years CDIAC has processed, documented, and disseminated several data sets useful to climate change research that otherwise would have been lost. Examples include Angell’s global, hemispheric, and zonal air temperature records from a radiosonde network and Norwegian Raidar Nydal’s atmospheric carbon isotope measurements. Many of these orphaned data sets remain heavily used and cited by global change

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researchers. These orphaned data sets offer unique historical records and serve as valuable validation sources.

Resources do not permit CDIAC to rescue all potentially orphaned data sets but we will continue to track important data sets and evaluate their future availability. Potential orphans will be evaluated both for data quality and the level of effort required to save the data set.

Coordination and Outreach

The following discusses CDIAC’s coordination with the ARM data archive, outreach efforts, and data and information request activities.

Coordination of Data Activities with ARM

Both CDIAC and the ARM data archives reside at ORNL within the Environmental Sciences Division. Coordination and collaboration is improving among the centers and areas where cooperation can help both data centers will be strengthened in the future.

For example, in the coming year carbon flux measurements from the ARM CART site in Oklahoma will be incorporated into the larger AmeriFlux data collection at CDIAC. CDIAC will assist the ARM archive with meteorological definitions and priorities in the context of global change research. Statistical tools developed to evaluate large databases by ARM staff will be evaluated for potential use by CDIAC. Radiation, soil, and precipitation measurements made at the Oklahoma ARM CART site will be evaluated for inclusion in a modeling activity, with data processed through CDIAC, assessing ecosystem drought response in the Midwest region of the US.

CDIAC Outreach

Outreach is vitally important to our data center and in support of DOE global change research programs. CDIAC outreach is accomplished in a variety of ways. CDIAC staff attend and present research results, data findings, and data philosophies at technical conferences, workshops, and symposia; and as invited speakers by agencies and universities. CDIAC staff participate actively in international planning activities and scientific assessments (e.g., Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), serve on research proposal review panels and advisory boards, serve as editors on scientific journals, organize and chair conference sessions, publish papers, and mentor students. Outreach is also accomplished by creating and distributing information products. Each year CDIAC has produced a newsletter (CDIAC Communications) and annual report. We have also produced periodic research summaries, brochures, glossaries, and catalogs. Most importantly, CDIAC has distributed quality data and information to users worldwide without charge over the past twenty years.

CDIAC must continue to “outreach” in all the ways described above and in new ways consistent with the evolution of climate change research and to take full advantage of

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advances in computing technologies. For example, CDIAC is in a unique position to support evolving programs (e.g., NACP) and activities (e.g., data assimilation modeling). Stakeholder workshops are being planned in preparation for the “State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR)”, promised as part of the CCSP. CDIAC will participate in these stakeholder meetings to identify stakeholder data and information needs in meeting the objectives of CCSP. As an example of keeping pace with changing computing technologies and modes of information exchange, we plan to abandon our traditional printed newsletter in favor of a new, electronic Web version. We will also introduce a “Highlights” section to the CDIAC Web site as is popular on many Web sites today.

CDIAC’s Web site has become our major form of outreach to the world, with nearly 600,000 visits annually and viewing of over 3 million CDIAC Web pages. It is important from an outreach standpoint that CDIAC computing staff continue to understand how Web browsers and search engines work. Detailed understanding and application of this knowledge to ensure that search engines will find CDIAC is crucial to our outreach. We will continue to invest time and effort (e.g., placing meta tags in all CDIAC html files) to guarantee Web browsers find our data center and products.

Data and Information Request/Response/Records

CDIAC receives requests for information and data by e-mail, mail, facsimile, and telephone. These “traditional” requests now pale (<1000/yr) compared to the numbers of people who access the CDIAC Web site or retrieve data directly from CDIAC’s FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server. Considerable effort is expended each year to develop and maintain CDIAC’s thousands of Web pages.

With the increasing use of the Internet and our reluctance to require users to register before admittance to the CDIAC Web site, it has become increasingly difficult to identify precisely who is retrieving data and information from CDIAC. CDIAC uses several software packages (e.g., NetTracker) and program utilities (e.g., Cold Fusion) to generate user statistics from Web log files.

Looking forward CDIAC will continue to constantly evaluate the way we respond to requests and how we quantify our user statistics. New software packages (e.g., WebTrends) will be evaluated in an attempt to offer more detailed usage statistics. Perl scripts written to process log files from our Web areas and FTP areas will be refined to deliver more detailed usage information. As mentioned before large data files will be made available in NetCDF format. We will assemble a database documenting requests to our center that we are unable to handle in the hope this will aid us in determining future data and product priorities. In the section that follows, future enhancements to CDIAC’s primary search tool (i.e., Mercury) are discussed.

CDIAC Computing Infrastructure

The present CDIAC computing system network is comprised of approximately one terabyte (TB) of storage capacity distributed across a Redundant Array of Independent

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Disks (RAID), two dedicated Dell Poweredge and two Sun Enterprise servers, and 16 personal computers running under Red Hat Linux and/or Windows XP operating systems. Exhaustive efforts are made to ensure the CDIAC computing network is secure and standards compliant. The present CDIAC computing system provides CDIAC staff access to approximately 25 software packages for data processing, analysis, and visualization; word processing; WEB development; generating user statistics; network system diagnostics; and graphics preparation. In addition, the CDIAC computing network provides numerous customized tools, developed within and outside ORNL, to facilitate CDIAC’s data cataloging, presentation, and documentation efforts. Prime examples of ORNL tools customized for use in the CDIAC system network include the ORNL Metadata Editor (OME) and Mercury harvesting application. The OME permits researchers or CDIAC staff to describe data sets and create standard files (i.e., XML encoded) which are then harvested, cataloged, and made Web-searchable by a Mercury instance.

Data center computer systems must keep pace with advancements in computing technologies to remain efficient, secure, compliant and cost effective. Routine system maintenance in the future will require CDIAC to replace or upgrade servers, software, and disk storage systems. The most immediate of these necessary upgrades will be to replace our existing data storage backup system and to migrate servers on the Sun/Solaris operating systems to the newer Dell/Red Hat Linux systems.

In the coming years CDIAC will inventory its’ entire data collection using the CDIAC OME and Mercury applications. The resulting virtual “CDIAC Data and Information Catalog” will be Web searchable using CDIAC’s Mercury instance (http://mercury.ornl.gov/cdiac). In addition, the CDIAC Mercury instance will be further populated to promote “one-stop shopping” for users by identifying relevant external holdings (e.g., DOE Energy Information Administration energy statistics) and by processing entries from other ORNL Mercury applications. We are optimistic that new features such as object broker technology can be incorporated into the CDIAC Mercury instance. This would permit users to not only locate data of interest, but also subset and produce graphical representations or file output from the same application. A new tracking system will be developed soon to track CDIAC data internally from the point of submission to the final, processed, publically-available version.

Beginning in FY 2005, CDIAC will begin assembling a relational database to facilitate data integration and synthesis across the entire CDIAC data collection. This relational database will serve as the foundation for future plans to enhance CDIAC’s data visualization and GIS analysis capabilities. Enhanced data visualization and analysis further strengthens CDIAC’s analytical abilities and improves the quality and breadth of CDIAC’s data presentation to users.

Summary

In summary, we believe CDIAC is well suited to meet many of the data management needs required by CCSP to meet their scientific goals. We will continue to strive to

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improve our data services in support of the large, international scientific community who rely on CDIAC for quality, well-documented climate-change data. We will continue to implement new computing technologies as necessary, provide mentoring to future scientists and data practitioners, assemble databases needed to address evolving scientific questions, and provide long-term care for essential historical databases. We believe CDIAC will not only provide a tremendous service to users of climate change data but will also make significant future contributions to climate change research including quantifying and evaluating the spatial and temporal variability of anthropogenic CO2 releases, improving model cloud and aerosol parameterization, developing rich carbon stock and flux information essential to data assimilation modeling and remote-sensing validation efforts, and detecting sudden climate changes in sensitive ecosystems.

Finally, we believe our work is very important. We are proud and eager to serve in this capacity and are excited by CDIAC’s future. Many questions remain about the greenhouse effect and global climate change. We find it extremely gratifying to be able to furnish answers to some of these questions through our data work and to further understanding by providing others with quality data and information.

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