Earth System Data Lab (ESDL)

The main objective of the Earth System Data Lab (ESDL) project is to establish and operate a service to the scientific community that greatly facilitates access and exploitation of the multivariate data set in the ESDL and by this means advances the understanding of the interactions between the ocean-land-atmosphere system and society. To this end, the main tasks of the project fall into four main categories: infrastructure and operations, data sets and tools, use cases and scientific exploitation, and communication and outreach.

The core part of the ESDL is the data in analysis-ready form, together with tools and methods to generate, access, and exploit the ESDL. The software to generate the ESDL and the data access APIs have been developed in the preceding project CAB-LAB. The modular open source approach adopted in CAB-LAB has proven to be convenient, flexible, and powerful and effectively meets user requirements.

ESDL further evolves the range of available tools according to the requirements formulated by the different user groups of the service, while users may also contribute their own solutions and share them with others on github.

The project continuously extends the datasets included in the ESDL. The additions imply both extending the data coverage in time as well as the introduction of completely new data sets.  Examples for specific requirements include marine parameters and the missing parameters from ESA’s CCI programme, e.g. Land Cover, Clouds, Aerosols, and Green House Gases.

As for the software part, the main objective for these additions is to increase the ESDL’s utility and versatility and thus ultimately the uptake of scientific users, who will then have a powerful tool to advance our understanding of the Earth system dynamics.

User uptake and scientific exploitation through the implementation of use cases is actively promoted by several tasks. The project adopts a three-stage approach and accordingly defines three different user types, Champion Users (CU, pre-defined use cases), Early Adopters (EA, Open call), and the Scientific Community (SC, free use).

All ESDL users have in common that they are using the ESDL for scientific exploitation. While doing so, they are helping to improve the ESDL and the service provided, to increase the awareness for this activity and the offered service, and to extend the ESDL by contributing own source code and data sets. The ESDL is complemented by extensive outreach, communication, and training activites, which will foster user uptake, empower users to optimally exploit the ESDL, and eventually yield tangible scientific results in the form of peer-reviewed articles in international journals.

Champion Use Cases:

Four Champion use cases will be implemented in collaboration with distinguished experts  to demonstrate the wide range of different approaches that may be adopted with the ESDL:

• EM-DAT: Environmental conditions during societal catastrophes
• GEO-BON Colombia: Supporting regional initiatives in Colombia towards an Ecological Observation System
• Marine NPP: Primary productivity models in the ocean
• MDI: Biogeochemical Model Optimization

Results:

• The Data Lab is accessible via registration https://www.earthsystemdatalab.net/index.php/interact/data-lab/
• User Guide and Source code for Python and Julia https://www.earthsystemdatalab.net/index.php/documentation/user-guide/
• The Earth System Data Lab is available on the Euro Data Cube https://eurodatacube.com/