Data delivery system: The CMCC platform for obtaining and sharing climate data

Temperature, precipitation, ocean salinity, evapotranspiration, indicators: climate data relates not only to observations that represent our climate system in a specific location and time, but also to numerical models that simulate the climate of the past and the future.

Data produced through research can feed further research, thus highlighting the importance of distributing and sharing information with the scientific community, so that our global knowledge on climate change is more efficient and progresses faster. Sharing data means not only consolidating the work done but also allowing other users to gain a head start when carrying out their own research.

In this framework, the CMCC Foundation has developed and made available the CMCC Data Delivery System (

dds.cmcc.it

), with the aim of facilitating the dissemination of data produced and used by the CMCC within its research activities.

“Given the high volume of data produced by climate models and observations, it is critical to provide a tool that allows for data to be accessed in a seamless and efficient way. With this new service, the CMCC Foundation provides a unique, open and free access point to facilitate the dissemination within the scientific community of CMCC datasets related to research results and international service products, such as Copernicus,” states Marco Mancini, head of the Production Platforms for Operational Services Research Unit within the Advanced Scientific Computing division at the CMCC.

As of today, most climate datasets are represented with hundreds or thousands of files. This makes finding, investigating, and extracting information a daunting prospect for potential users. The CMCC Data Delivery System overcomes this issue by allowing the user to directly access information she/he is looking for – be it a variable or an indicator – through a simplified web interface.

“Taking as a reference the Climate Data Store of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), we have developed a service that allows users to access data in a simple way. The user can easily browse – through a web interface – a catalogue of available datasets and build appropriate queries to retrieve the data she/he is interested in. Once registered on the portal, the user can select a specific dataset and download it by choosing from a list of available climate variables, selecting the geographical area of interest or a location, and/or the time period,” Mancini explains.

The web portal already contains several datasets and others will be added in the coming months. The variety of the datasets, produced by the CMCC’s scientific divisions and stored at CMCC Super Computing Centre in Lecce, highlights the multidisciplinary nature of research activities carried out at the Centre. BioClim is a dataset of 35 bioclimatic indicators – such as annual mean temperature, evapotranspiration, annual and seasonal precipitation – useful for different studies, including those in the field of ecology and environment. Black Sea physics analysis and Forecasting System offers daily means of Black Sea oceanographic variables – such as temperature, salinity, and currents – from July 2018. Historical Global Cooling and Heating degree-days (1970-2019) contains high-resolution historical global gridded datasets of monthly and annual cooling and heating degree-days (1970-2019).

“The service is continuously evolving,” continues Mancini. “Besides enriching the catalogue with new datasets, we are working to further improve the user experience: data and information access is the key in research productivity. Therefore, we have been developing new functionalities that will be integrated into the service, including visualisation features, that will further facilitate the access and use of climate information produced by the CMCC Foundation”.

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More information:

CMCC Data Delivery System –

dds.cmcc.it