1. Ed Kearns National Climatic Data Center Asheville, NC

2. Archive and Access Archives preserve data, make them accessible in meaningful ways, and ensure their information remains available for future generations. What changes in technology and observing systems are anticipated? What kinds of data and information should be archived in the future? What can the Data Centers do to prepare?

3. Archive Responsibilities Accept information from Data Producers Exercise sufficient control to ensure long-term preservation and access (stewardship) Ensures the information to be preserved is independently understandable and accessible now and in the future Follow policies and procedures that ensure the information is preserved against all reasonable contingencies

4. IT Issues Physical Storage: Paper, Tapes, Spinning Disk Future: solid state? All ultimately fragile Security though redundancy Multiple copies, distributed systems Access : high speed internet, physical media delivery Distributed systems, multiple access points Data formats: facilitate access, self describing, metadata stds Access tools that serve data to a variety of audiences The data can be expected to be well-cared for….but what about the information?

5. What to archive? NOAA Observing Systems Council http://www.nosc.noaa.gov/docs/products/NOAA_Procedure _document_final_12-16-1.pdf http://www.nosc.noaa.gov/docs/products/NOAA_Procedure _document_final_12-16-1.pdf Volume of Observations : NCDC stores 3.5 PB today NPOESS, next-gen NEXRAD : several PB per year increase Model outputs : archive them if not easily reproducible But for how long? Shelf life of synthetic data? Derived products : process raw records to higher levels Example Climate Data Records (CDR) Climate Information Records (CIR)

6. CDR and CIR Climate Data Records (CDRs) are the essential long term records for climate studies and assessments CDRs require updates as our knowledge of the observing systems and science improves Archived data must be revisited, reprocessed Climate Information Records (CIRs) are derived from and directly dependent upon CDRs Higher level CIRs will be found more useful by a larger number of user communities Water managers, energy industry, ecosystem managers CIRs place more emphasis on access and delivery

7. Current challenges Fully track associations between the archived information and its users and applications Provides an aggregate value of the info for our society Establish a 2-way relationship between info and users Provides a context for the information for future users Deliver more information to broader communities Less reliance on hierarchal systems and more on networked systems – ideally a blend of the two Faster transitions from research to operations

8. Thoughts and questions Throughout history, significant information breakthroughs have brought about social and/or technological revolutions Scientific literacy? The survival of archives across generations has been a political issue, not a technical or physical issue. Archives must serve society to stay relevant – so what does society want from our archives?