Spatial Data Service Operations for MetOp/Gome-2 Atmospheric Composition Products

Abstract

In order to promote the use of atmospheric composition products derived from MetOp/GOME-2 in a wider community, DLR operates processing and delivery systems as well as spatial data services based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. Through the Web Map Service (WMS) and the Web Coverage Service (WCS) different data layers, projections and views can be portrayed for interactive inspection and the full resolution primary data can be downloaded for further processing. Complementary to the data delivery services provided by DLR in the framework of the Ozone and Atmospheric Chemistry Monitoring Satellite Application Facility (O3M-SAF), DLR operates spatial data services for total and tropospheric column products for a number of trace gases (O3, NO2, BrO, SO2, H2O, OClO and HCHO) as well as cloud properties (cloud fraction, cloud-top pressure and cloud optical thickness) derived from GOME-2. These products are available in near-real-time (less than 2 hours after sensing) and offline. During more than one year of test and productive operations for a continuously growing number of product types, DLR gained practical experience with operational and configuration aspects of providing atmospheric composition datasets through standard business-to-business spatial data services. Taking into account the various data species (trace gases and cloud properties), product quality information, different levels of temporal and spatial aggregation and assimilation, as well as different data timeliness, the spatial data services were configured, optimized and presented with the goal of best serving a wide range of applications ranging from short-term air quality monitoring and chemical weather forecasting to long-term climate research. This contribution gives an overview of the full GOME-2 operational data processing chain from reception to the access service front-ends. The focus is on operational experience gained in the configuration, optimization, presentation and performance of atmospheric data access services. In addition we introduce the EOWEB® GeoPortal, the new DLR multi-mission web portal for interactive access to earth observation data. EOWEB® GeoPortal integrates the classical catalogue-and-order services with the novel browse-and-download data access paradigm. Finally, a short outlook on future developments planned by DLR to extend the spatial data services is presented.