ARM Data File Standards Version: 1.0

Abstract

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility performs routine in situ and remote-sensing observations to provide a detailed and accurate description of the Earth atmosphere in diverse climate regimes. The result is a diverse data sets containing observational and derived data, currently accumulating at a rate of 30 TB of data and 150,000 different files per month (http://www.archive.arm.gov/stats/storage2.html). Continuing the current processing while scaling this to even larger sizes is extremely important to the ARM Facility and requires consistent metadata and data standards. The standards described in this document will enable development of automated analysis and discovery tools for the ever-growing volumes of data. It also will enable consistent analysis of the multiyear data, allow for development of automated monitoring and data health status tools, and facilitate development of future capabilities for delivering data on demand that can be tailored explicitly to user needs. This analysis ability will only be possible if the data follows a minimum set of standards. This document proposes a hierarchy that includes required and recommended standards.