ArcticGEOSS space

Offering an ArcticGEOSS data centre

What is offered?

It will offer for other organizations from any country with Arctic data to archive near real-time satellite and in-situ observation data at the Finnish National Satellite Data Center. It holds already a substantial archive of European satellite and in-situ data sets and will now be offering also space for other data sets missing a long-term archiving solution. A mix of national and EU support is aspired for this center with a base support from Finland being secured already. Please apply to receive your corner of this infrastructure.

Finnish Meteorological Institute managing Earth observation data since 1838

Professor Jouni Pulliainen and his Space Observation and Earth Observation Centre will donate the resources for the data centre that would hold as many satellite or in-situ data sets as other partners would provide building on a already substantial set presently hosted at Finland’s National Satellite Data Centre.

How can one use the archive?

FMI will deliver a service comparable to Copernicus DIAS platforms, where data from multiple sources can be processed in the cloud in near real-time for fast delivery applications. The data sets are all in the same data centre on the powerful Smartmet server stack of data dissemination and application solutions. A Geoserver cluster can be used for raster data dissemination in OGC standard web services. The ambition is to give Arctic research actions a sufficient level of free to use dissemination, processing and data archiving capacities for streamlining and accelerating the knowledge production from Arctic observations. In addition to enabling knowledge creation on the system itself, this action is actively trying to engage with other exploitation platforms (ESA Polar TEP, CNSIDC, Copernicus DIASs, NextGEOSS, EU Open Science Cloud, WMO GCW portal, etc). It offers with the open source Smartmet server a solution to have backend/frontend solutions for combining data sets for processing across physically distant data centres. It will interface into Arctic Spatial Data infrastructure.
It will end up on http://arcticgeoss.space/ website.
FMI plans to develop pilot services for several climate change applications in relation to EuroGEOSS on this platform, with frontends in its Sodankylä premises data centre and backends at Copernicus C3S data centre operated by ECMWF:

  • improve northern hydropower production forecasts into seasonal timescales by improving snow monitoring accuracy and using seasonal weather forecasts.
  • soil frost monitoring will be improved and exploited for forestry applications.

Similarly the WMO Global Cryosphere Watch data portal will be connected to ArcticGEOSS data assets.
In addition to satellite remote sensing observations, the data centre will also include FMI radiosonde sounding observations from the Special Observation Periods of the WMO Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP), as well as Snow and Ice Mass Balance Buoy (SIMBA) observations on the evolution of snow and sea ice thickness and temperature profiles along the buoy drift trajectories in the Arctic Ocean.

ArcticGEOSS is a newly formed GEO community action seeking to be recognized in the 2018 GEO Plenary as a GEO initiative. It will be an addition to Group on Earth Observation regional initiatives (AmeriGEOSS, EuroGEOSS, Asia/OceaniaGEOSS, AfriGEOSS). By using GEOSS platform services it connects with the common infrastructure of global systems and ensures discovery to most other providers and users of Earth Observation data.

International cooperation dimension

With many platforms having data and processing as services inter-operating these  platforms will be a challenge for the users. This FMI action is seeking to form a community of practice for exploitation platforms.  Together the community will be better in improving processing chains for near real-time services in diverse application domains. The following initiatives have signalled a motivation to participate:

  • SAON arctic data committee
  • WMO Global Cryosphere Watch data portal
  • Polar Knowledge Canada
  • ESA Polar TEP
  • NSIDC
  • ECMWF with the Copernicus C3S service
  • Chinese Academy of Science with HiMAC (High Mountain and Cold Regions) EO centre
  • Group on Earth Observation

Relation to Arctic Science Ministerial (ASM) themes

It is an action that is targeted not only at second ASM themes, but goals are set in the Sustaining Arctic Observing Networks strategies as well. The first ASM was explicitly asking to strengthen SAON actions and helping observation activities to become sustainable. The centre offers to take care of archiving and data management actions in the light of a common Arctic Data Infrastructure for any Arctic data where long-term sustainability is not guaranteed. The ArcticGEOSS centre will also offer Open Geospatial Consortium standards interfaces to all its data holdings to enable any researcher with standard tools to exploit it for the overall mission of Arctic Science.
For the second ASM this deliverable helps in all themes areas. It is being very concrete on the access to data infrastructure and sharing aspect. This action will however also help in understanding change and in assessing vulnerabilities.