Services

CREATE-IP Data Services

The NASA Climate Model Data Services (CDS) team is collaborating with the five major reanalysis projects to collect monthly and hourly data, formatted identically to facilitate comparisons, and present it through a range of services:  Distribution, Visualization, Analytics, and Knowledge, resulting in the Collaborative REAnalysis Technical Environment – Intercomparison Project (CREATE-IP). The purpose of these services is to support the study of reanalysis differences and uncertainties between the reanalyses, and, since reanalysis data is essentially a re-forecast of past weather using the latest forecast models, support interdisciplinary scientists in their efforts to compare their datasets (e.g. biodiversity, water planning, wind power) with 30 or more years of gridded climate data.

Distribution

Distribution services provide the ability for CREATE-IP to standardize and centralize the presentation of reanalysis data thereby simplifying the effort of researchers to locate and download desired data. 

ESGF is the designated CREATE-IP distribution service. ESGF allows users to search by facets such as Project, Model, and Variable and then download the data via http, wget, or OPeNDAP, with future plan for Globus access. When searching for a particular variable, you must perform the variable search from the Data Cart.  The CREATE-IP COG website provides access to the ESGF data as well as information about the reanalyses projects to support users in both their intercomparison efforts and their interdisciplinary work.

Visualization

Users often require a visual look into data prior to downloading to verify interest or to generate imagery for download. This helps reduces the big data problem of downloading large amounts of data over congested networks and then storing them in large data repositories. 

CREATE-V - CREATE-IP data is available through a web visualization tool called CREATE-V that is based on UCAR’s Climate Inspector code and utilizes WMS.

Users are able to visualize the data through a simple interface that supports the ability to select a project, variable, level (for 3D data), date, and color map.