IN11F-1807
Can ASCII data files be standardized for Earth Science?

Monday, 14 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Keith D Evans, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, Baltimore, MD, United States, Gao Chen, NASA Langley Research Ctr, Hampton, VA, United States, Anne Wilson, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States, Emily Law, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, Stephen W Olding, Columbus Technologies and Services Arlington, Arlington, VA, United States and Nickolay Anatoly Krotkov, NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States
Abstract:
NASA’s Earth Science Data Systems Working Groups (ESDSWG) was created over 10 years ago. The role of the ESDSWG is to make recommendations relevant to NASA’s Earth science data systems from user experiences. Each group works independently focusing on a unique topic. Participation in ESDSWG groups comes from a variety of NASA-funded science and technology projects, such as MEaSUREs, NASA information technology experts, affiliated contractor, staff and other interested community members from academia and industry. Recommendations from the ESDSWG groups will enhance NASA’s efforts to develop long term data products.

Each year, the ESDSWG has a face-to-face meeting to discuss recommendations and future efforts. Last year’s (2014) ASCII for Science Data Working Group (ASCII WG) completed its goals and made recommendations on a minimum set of information that is needed to make ASCII files at least human readable and usable for the foreseeable future.

The 2014 ASCII WG created a table of ASCII files and their components as a means for understanding what kind of ASCII formats exist and what components they have in common. Using this table and adding information from other ASCII file formats, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a standardized format. For instance, Space Geodesy scientists have been using the same RINEX/SINEX ASCII format for decades. Astronomers mostly archive their data in the FITS format. Yet Earth scientists seem to have a slew of ASCII formats, such as ICARTT, netCDF (an ASCII dump) and the IceBridge ASCII format.

The 2015 Working Group is focusing on promoting extendibility and machine readability of ASCII data. Questions have been posed, including, Can we have a standardized ASCII file format? Can it be machine-readable and simultaneously human-readable? We will present a summary of the current used ASCII formats in terms of advantages and shortcomings, as well as potential improvements.

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