System of information in NOPEX - retrieval, use, and query of climate data

The uncertainty in climate predictions caused by improper understanding of the role of the land-surface is underestimated and easy access to data from a series of landscape types around the globe would improve this. Such data exist from a series of large-scale land-surface experiments but access to them has been difficult. It is the objective of this paper to demonstrate h ow the System for Information in NOPEX (SINOP) could be set up to provide a combination of data archive and tool for executing various time-limited an d long-term field activities. Setting up and running SINOP involved both te chnical and psychological issues. The major technical problems were associa ted with (i) the uninterrupted flow of large data volumes, (ii) data homoge neity, and (iii) the exploding technology development. The psychological an d organisational problems were more difficult to tackle than the technical problems. Funding agencies assumed somebody else would take care of data ar chiving and documentation, academic organisations have difficulties to comp ete with the private market for database managers, many individual scientis ts were unwilling to deliver their datasets and, especially, unwilling to d ocument them. It is suggested that changes in attitudes from scientists, ac ademic organisations, and publishers are needed to give credit for the publ ication of good datasets and for the production of good documentation about them. CDs incorporating a subset of SINOP with well-documented datasets fr om NOPEX operations in 1994 and 1995 are published together with this NOPEX Special Issue. The CDs include climate variables, such as radiation, fluxe s of heat, momentum, and water vapour, and various energy storage terms as well as hydrological variables from 13 sites within the central-Swedish NOP EX region, at the southern boundary of the boreal zone. The publication of these data is seen as a step towards giving data-set owners proper and cite able credit for their work. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reser ved.