Project 5 (TWP2-WP3) : Arctic data portal

Project leads: Kathy Law/ Philippe Keckhut

Post-doctoral researcher: Laura Cordero Llana

Project Start/End: September 2013 – August 2014

Within the LABEX L-IPSL there are many research projects focusing on the Arctic that have produced many observational datasets. The motivation for the creation of an L-IPSL Arctic data portal is to promote new avenues in Arctic research within L-IPSL, and to improve Arctic modelling capabilities within the framework of the French.

 Available observations include data on atmospheric chemical composition, microphysical properties of snow, ocean measurements, cloud distributions, meteorological data and permafrost fluvial evolution data. These observations come from very different sources: satellite missions, field campaigns (e.g. aircraft) and long-term or in-situ measurements. Fig. 1 shows the front page of the Arctic web portal:  http://climserv.ipsl.polytechnique.fr/arcticportal/. It provides links to existing datasets including information about each dataset using a user-friendly web-based environment. The portal contains standardized information (metadata) about each dataset including a general description, science objectives, technical information like temporal and spatial resolution as well as details about the instruments and platforms and the main scientific contacts and relevant publications and links relevant data centers (e.g. ICARE, Ether).

The Arctic portal was launched during the Labex-IPSL Atelier in December 2014. Further improvements can still be made including a search tool for keywords or external links to other international Arctic data portals as well as updating with new datasets. There is also the potential to expand to include or link to other national/international projects. In a second phase, a data policy could be developed to facilitate the use of datasets for the evaluation of models at L-IPSL, including the global IPSL climate model and regional models.Finally, a manuscript describing the portal is the process of being submitted.
Position offer and results (January 2017 update)