Date and Time

2 February 2021, 12:00-14:00 UTC

Venue

Telecon

Participants

• Jörg Klausen (chair)
• Stoyka Netcheva (WMO)
• Christopher Lehmann
• Tom Kralidis
• Judd Welton
• Jeannette Wild
• Eduardo Landulfo
• Dietrich Feist
• Gao Chen
• Kjetil Tørseth
• Debra Kollonige
• Corinne Galy-Lacaux
• Atsuya Kinoshita
• Keiichi Sato
• Nobo Sugimoto
• Vincent-Henri Peuch

Excused

• Markus Fiebig
• Martin Schultz

Agenda

1. Welcome, acceptance of agenda (5')
2. Acceptance of minutes of previous meeting (5')
3. Review of the slide deck for SSC presentation and the work plan [jkl 15’ + 35’ discussion]
4. Report on the status of aligning metadata of each WDC and other DC to GAWSIS-OSCAR/Surface [all 30’]
5. Inform the team on TT-WIGOSMD activities [jkl 5’]
6. AOB [all 15’]
7. Next meeting proposed for 1 April 11:00-12:00 UTC (14:00-16:00 Geneva)

Minutes

1. Welcome, acceptance of agenda

Agenda accepted

2. Acceptance of minutes of previous meeting

Minutes accepted

3. Review of the slide deck for SSC presentation and the work plan

Discussion and real-time amendments to slide deck. Posted insert url.

JK as the chair of the team has been invited to give 10 minutes presentation at the next Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) meeting during the week of 11 February about our work plan and to highlight issues that SSC should address. We are opening our meeting to topics and ideas for the implementation plan that is coming up very soon. A slide deck was prepared by Joerg based on the input from each one of WDCs and CNs. The intention is to Update and amend presentation where is needed in real time. A short sum up and to inform the team on operational achievements at each center is also expected at this meeting which information is added at the end of the slide deck and SSC would get the whole deck and review it outside of the meeting which is very limited in time due to its remote character. Joerg extracted from all individual inputs the information in response to the requirements that will be given at the presentation.

ToR 

There are a number of tasks or topics that should be addressed as an expert team. As we changed our name, we are sort of difficult group in the sense that most of our membership is data center managers engaged in operational activities and not necessarily providing an outside /independent view and the user perspective in the sense of advising. We're in between an operational team collaborating on very practical aspects, trying to improve the overall architecture and the functioning of the GAW data management. And, and at the same time, we are expected to step back and have this outside expert team advice for the whole program and perhaps we're falling a little bit short on the second aspect. But we're doing pretty good on the first one. It will be of great benefit to the program if we had such experts on the team who can step back and from the outside provide a view. On how the GAW data management works at the moment, what should be improved, where we are doing great and where we need to make progress. And also the link to the rest of the WMO data management, which is much more operational would be good to strengthen.

The first bullet on the presentation is the big achievement of this team to operate and maintain these data centers and databases. JK is congratulating all participants who are engaged in doing this and thank you them for supporting the GAW program and the wider atmospheric composition community with this operational task.

All participants in the meeting and those who were not able to participants are invited to review the deck and provide feedback on what they would like to see on the work plan and the presentation slides in addition to what Joerg included based on his knowledge and the information on individual slides during the current meeting and within one week time we have by the meeting.

Operation, achievements 

The ongoing work was discussed through 6 meetings in 2020. It included contributions to the SAGs join session and to the WMO data conference, and our contribution, our perspective from the atmospheric composition community was well-received. The WMO is working on a new data policy resolution under the working title resolution 42 in the response to all open questions at the conference and that work is coming along well. JK as part of the task team on WIGOS metadata we have established a working group (an ad hoc team) on atmospheric composition vocabulary. JK would like to present the status and how the data centers contribute to the central repository, a metadata repository that WMO is responsible for, and that MeteoSwiss operates on WMO behalf.

PID and DOI 

A slide summarizes the status of PID and the DOI and our discussions. This discussion has not come to an end as to how we want to implement this and what guidance we can give to, to the program and to ourselves in the end.

Correction was made that NDACC does publish DOI. It is actively used.

MPLNET as SHADOZ are in process of implementing DOIs where their institution is working on making it move forward.

Judd W: Note was made to have MPLNET be all capital letters.

JK: If the SSC made a clear statement about the (DOI) requirements this needs to go into the metadata standard and from there to the OSCAR application in terms of practical implementation. If SSC comes back for the recommendation we are prepared to do that. I will then circulate a draft recommendation amongst you so that we are all in the same boat. In principle, I have not heard anybody the group here on the call who argues against and many have already implemented or are planning to implement it. This is a good argument to be made, why this should be implemented and also be part of, of the metadata Internationally exchanged.

GC: Different journals have different requirements for DUI. That's actually creating problems.

JK: Let me make a note on the slide.

Data formats, interoperability and better meeting users’ needs

One interesting part from a presentation at WMO conference is the actual driver behind. Lady Zeinab made a strong point at her presentation that was also taken back up in the discussions at WMO Conference was about the fact that we are still working with different data formats at the different data centers requiring different submissions. And that this is a problem for the data Contributors. Joerg would like to take this up in our work plan for this year to make progress on this because it is what we see also. In the figure on the left here this is a figure taken from the GAW implementation plan. The details of what happens behind the scene in the data centers should not be of concern for contributors. We should take this burden of having to submit in different formats to different places off their shoulders. It's a long process and it requires technical efforts, but he thinks the principle as it stands cannot easily be disputed. We should work towards this, trying to come to a point where we can accept or rather when the GAW program can accept data in the traditional formats that you know well are accepted and to accept data in a harmonized format. We will have a discussion about what that format should be or could be and where the data users can retrieve data in different formats. Many data centers have already made quite a bit of progress and you can download data from the data centers in different formats. Joerg thinks that this is really catering to the user's needs and user requirement and it is an important topic that we should address in our work this year and the years to come. Speaking about a common data format NetCDF, CF is in the air for that and to explore this as a common data format. It should be discussed considering cos- benefit because certainly there is a cost to single data format, but there are also benefits.

Capacity building 

The work plan is the operation of the data centers which is a big achievement and a big task all in itself. It's an activity that we do and should do and should be doing. Let's try to consult each other in terms of how the data centers evolve. All your peers have good advice and a lot of experience and they can help. We can help each other to, to evolve towards improved services. Certainly, to support users provided feedback to our team.

Improved discoverability, linking DC and DB 

The link of the data centers to the central repository comes in terms of the common/WIGOS metadata and then the world data centers are being connected operationally to the system. We would like to see some of the data centers of the contributing networks also be linked operationally.

Links with SAGs and other GAW and WMO Expert Teams 

Our work plan is also to respond to the SAGs requests. They need to address our ET and to share the requirements with us. We will, as a team, be also proactive towards the SAGs in, in advising the program, but in terms of data management. It's through reports to the SSC periodically that we can raise our voice otherwise. SAGs can also request what we should discuss and work on because the SAGs at least historically have been also in very close contact to the scientific users and the service-oriented uses of the data that are being generated.

KPIs

A very specific task is to develop a common set of KPIs for the data centers supporting GAW. This is proposed for discussion, but it would be a good idea to develop a set of KPIs. It helps justify all the achievements also to individual funding agencies. And it may also help to identify particular areas of concern and where further evolution may be beneficial.

NRT

Joerg considered the aspect of near real-time and real-time data management as an important one to get guidance SSC formulating these requirements. We often do not have specific requirements. And then it should go to those who is needed, should be implementing the machinery to facilitate this.

Internal topics 

From SHADOZ came the question about how to organize the metadata management when there are multiple contacts or I could say also multiple data centers who host the same data sets and hence provide metadata on, on the same data sets. How do we deal with that?

We need to continue updates and additions to the code list. That is something that Judd brought in and Joerg fully agree. This TT working group is dealing with this aspect now. And Joerg can say that input from all the team is welcome. Some of have been already engaged. NILU is engaged and everybody is welcome to put in their requirements. So that this can converge to something much better than what it is today.

Very practical request from Judd referring to the use of the GTS. Joerg doesn't have the response immediately. So this is something we need to perhaps devote one of the next meetings.

JW: It goes closely related to that issue of creating new stations in OSCAR and I have a bunch of them for instance, that I don't have a good way to create because of the various issues with the national representatives and things like that. But I think that's closely related to this issue because to solve what's listed there probably involves the national rep.

JK: To some degree yes, in a first instance that is at least the preferred approach that the national representatives, the countries themselves create stations. It is also part of the GAW policy actually in the implementation plan. If you look at one of the annexes it says that stations need to be approved as GAW stations. So for those at least this process of being registered in GAWSIS or OSCAR- surface, is mandatory. In principle WDC are not supposed to accept data from a station that claims to be a GAW station without finding it in GAWSIS and in Oscar now. For the contributing stations, this is of course a different.

The WMO policy and WMO is a club of members of States and territories who have agreed to this. The members are in control of the metadata in Oscar. So they need to create these stations in the first place. Now we have found that some countries cooperate better than others or are more able to do this than others.

And that's why the most recent Congress has drafted this exception list and GAW is one of the programs that has now delegation to create these station identifiers as well as in the case the countries don't cooperate for some reason. It's almost resolved, but maybe not quite, but the idea is that the data centers who want to do this operationally, they would get an issue.

A link to the slide deck with Work Plan will be sent and everybody should be able to download and edit the slide deck by the end of this week, and then JK will consolidate it and will presented it next week as SSC meeting.

A quick review of KPI (as presented on diagram) followed where all various centers placed themselves now and at the end of the year and which is helpful for the planning and the presentation. The diagram has two dimensions. One is the capacity to generate metadata in the XML format that is required and ranges from not started to yes, we have examples, we've tried and most advance is mature which means we know exactly how to do this. On the other axis is the capacity or use of the machine to machine API which is basically the automation of this process. It ranges from from not started to some tests done to yes, we are operational. A discussion followed with all participants on where they see themselves on this diagram at the start and the end of the year. At the end of the discussion a second opportunity was given to reflect on plans and comment. A question of missing some important aspect on the plans was also asked. Opportunity to raise issues, to comment in case there is a disagreement with some point on presented points of the work plan for 2021 was given to all participants. No concerns, comments and no issues were raised. This was considered as consent with the general orientation and as a work plan by all participants. It will be followed with a bit more specific discussion about how, what we want to achieve and by when, and to support this activity.

JK created a simple Wiki page linked where everybody is invited to help fill the voids and during the next meeting of this team, we can review our plan and make actions items more concrete so that we can stimulate ourselves also in following up with them.

4. Report on the status of aligning metadata of each WDC and other DC to GAWSIS-OSCAR/Surface

Partly covered in discussion under 3, will be taken up again and worked on in between meetings.

5. Inform the team on TT-WIGOSMD activities

TT-WIGOSMD normally meets every last Thursday each month. The focus since fall 2020 was on code list amendments/corrections for the fast track procedure FT-2021-1. This process has been completed. The ad-hoc Working Group on Atmospheric Composition Vocabulary WG-ACV has been re-established under TT-WIGOSMD. The community is invited to contribute to reviewing issues related to ACV and submit additional issues if needed. The group is working towards submissions of code list amendments/corrections specifically on the code list of observed variables for the atmospheric domain for FT-2021-2 (deadline in June 2021). This is prone to affect the WIGOS metadata UML model and XML schema definitions as well.

6. AOB

None

7. Next meeting

25 March 12:00-14:00 UTC (13:00-15:00 Geneva)