Water and Climate data at NCI: seeking your feedback
NCI has started to consult more widely with the Water and Climate community on how to further improve the accessibility of data via NCI. If you are interested in providing some feedback on any improvements that would help you undertake your research, I invite you to contact me Ben.Evans@anu.edu.au.
As was described in the last OzEWEX newsletter, there are a large number of Climate and Water data collections are made available at NCI (http://nci.org.au/data-collections/data-collections/). In particular many datasets from the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, Geoscience Australia, IMOS, TERN, the ARC Centre of Excellence in Climate System Science, are available, as well as some high priority overseas datasets that have been conveniently replicated to the NCI filesystems. The total volume of the collections is now approaching 10 PBytes , and includes a number of datasets that have not been online before, and are conveniently located next to high performance computing. For remote users, we also expose datasets through standard data services (eg THREDDS). Our catalogue (http://geonetwork.nci.org.au) continues to improve with more specific endpoints to the datasets, and improved details that can be searched. You may also find it convenient to browse the TDS service (http://dap.nci.org.au).
For those wishing interactive ways to analyse data in-situ, we now have a secure remote desktop interface through our VDI service (Virtual Desktop Integration). If you have an account at NCI, you can install the VDI software for your platform using the following instructions (http://vdi.nci.org.au/help). This provides many of the standard tools for analysing data, including visual interface tools and well-known packages. Some licensed packages can be enabled by inserting your own license or pointing to your remote license server.
If you would like to know more about using these facilities, please contact us via help@nci.org.au.
Ben Evans
Associate Director, Research Engagement and Innovation
NCI
