Terra is the flagship of NASA’s Earth Observing System. Its datasets are amongst the most popular NASA datasets, serving not only the scientific community, but also governmental, commercial, and educational communities. The strength of the Terra mission has always been rooted in its five instruments and the ability to fuse the instrument data together for obtaining the greater quality of information for Earth Science compared to individual instruments alone. This project aims to efficiently generate and deliver Terra data fusion products, and facilitate the use of Terra data fusion products by the community.
Our approach leverages national facilities and services that are managed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, specifically the National Petascale Computing Facility, which houses the Blue Waters supercomputer, and the National Data Service (NDS). Key advantages of leveraging Blue Waters and the NDS for access, usage, and distribution of Terra data fusion products and science results are that the Terra data and processing are local, with access and sharing that are global. This represents a significant community-element addition to NASA’s system of systems infrastructure. ACCESS to Terra Data Fusion Products will initiate the development, access and delivery of Level 1B radiance Terra Fusion files for the broader community. Level 1B fusion provides the necessary stepping-stone for developing higher-level products, and provides the framework for other flavors of fusion. Enhancements to our existing open source codes in the CyberGIS Toolkit for scalable map projections on any grid for the new Terra Fusion files will also be delivered.
People: Yizhao Gao (ygao29@illinois.edu), Shaowen Wang (shaowen@illinois.edu), Yan Liu (yanliu@illinois.edu)
External Links: https://earthdata.nasa.gov/community/community-data-system-programs/access-projects/terra-data-fusion-products