AtMoDat consortium consists of nationally and internationally strongly networked partners from climate research (Universities of Hamburg and Leipzig) and instrastructure&operations: German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) and Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB). This guarantees high-quality competencies covering all aspects of this project. In addition, AtMoDat provides an interdisciplinary impetus for improvements in research data management.
German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ)
Hosting the World Data Center for Climate (WDCC), the DKRZ provides a certified long-term archive (LTA) for scientific data. One key aspect is the support of the "FAIR Data" principles for scientific data management and stewardship (FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable, re-useable). Currently, the DKRZ is focused on archiving global climate modeling data, such as CMIP data.
In AtMoDat, the DKRZ plans to extend its services towards further modeling communities, i.e. small model inter-comparison projects (MIPs) and urban climate modeling. For this purpose, existing metadata standards are to be adapted in order to cover the needs of these communities and to enable data curation. Additionally, a field specific “atmospheric model data DOI” (AMD-DOI) concept including data quality information should be established and applied to example cases. The AMD-DOI concept allows the data user to quickly identify high quality data sets. Quality controlled data characterized with an AMD-DOI leads to an increased re-use potential of the archived data. The curation processes developed and introduced in the course of the project will also lead to an improvement of processes already established at DKRZ.
DKRZ's homepage: https://www.dkrz.de/
WDCC at DKRZ: https://cera-www.dkrz.de/
Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology (TIB)
As a pioneer in the field of research data management, the DKRZ and the TIB coordinated the registration process for the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) as early as 2005 in a worldwide cooperation. In 2009 the international consortium DataCite e.V. was founded, whose office is located at the TIB. Today, the TIB currently supports more than 160 data centres that register DataCite DOIs for digital objects.
The AtMoDat work plan for the TIB is divided into two scopes. Firstly, the DataCite DOI metadata scheme will be extended and adapted for a quality assured 'Atmospheric Model Data DOI (AMD DOI) Branding' for the data sets of urban climate research and for small meteorological model comparison studies. Suitable metadata parameters are selected and described and the technical development is coordinated with DataCite. With the establishment of the AMD DOI, AtMoDat will introduce a discipline-shaped persistent identifier service to the scientific modelling communities. This service will provide all functionalities of the well-known DataCite DOIs, and at the same time provide a high level of quality control and therefore trustworthiness for the so published data.
Furthermore, the development of a technical vocabulary based on DCAT is planned in order to optimize the machine reusability of the data sets according to the FAIR Data Principles. For the (meta)data quality standards developed, the curation processes will then be adapted for operationalization so that the desired AMD-DOI branding can be incorporated into the workflows and business processes of the TIB's DOI Services.
TIB's homepage: https://www.tib.eu/
University of Hamburg, Meteorological Institute
The Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg (MI UHH) develops local and global scale meteorological models, operates one of largest and most modern boundary layer wind tunnels in Europe, and offers one of the few meteorology degree programs in Germany. The working groups “Mesoscale and Microscale Modelling” and “Environmental Wind Tunnel Laboratory” of the MI participate in AtMoDat. They develop urban climate models and do practical research in the wind tunnel, respectively. Both groups are very interested in advancing the standardization of (meta-)data in their fields of research and contribute their input as practice partners to AtMoDat.
Homepage: https://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/arbeitsgruppen/memi.html
University of Leipzig, Clouds and Global Climate Research Group
The research group Clouds and Global Climate of Institute for Meteorology of the University of Leipzig investigates clouds, aerosols, radiation and precipitation via modeling on regional and global scale.
Scientific progress in the field of atmospheric modeling is often achieved through model intercomparison projects (MIPs). In MIPs, the same situations are simulated with different atmospheric or climate models. Initial and boundary conditions and model setups are precisely prescribed. The diversity that nevertheless occurs allows systematic and statistical errors to be identified and possibly traced back to their causes. In general, these MIPs also aim at specific comparisons with observation data. For large MIPs, the model output data is also well defined in terms of format, provision and archiving.
The research group Clouds and Global Climate is involved in several smaller "grassroots" MIPs, including two projects in which scientists from Leipzig take leading roles: AEROCOM and ACPC. Within the "AEROCOM" project, Leipzig leads is a comparative study on warm rain, i.e. rain formed from liquid water clouds. New and not yet standardized model diagnostics have to be implemented and evaluated. On the one hand, standardization is necessary to achieve comparability. On the other hand, it cannot be too rigid, since changes may occur in the course of evaluation and of further scientific development. In the initiative Aerosols, Clouds, Precipitation and Climate (ACPC) the team of the University of Leipzig participates in the simulation of aerosol-cloud interactions with cloud system resolution models over limited model areas. Here, standardization is far less advanced than in global modelling, and it results in corresponding problems in standardizing and making data available.
Homepage: http://research.uni-leipzig.de/climate/