Much attention has been given to the challenges of handling massive data volumes in modern data-intensive science. This paper examines an equally daunting challenge -the diversity of interdisciplinary data, notably research data, and the need to interrelate these data to understand complex systemic problems such as environmental change and its impact. We use the experience of the International Polar Year 2007-8 (IPY) as a case study to examine data management approaches seeking to address issues around complex interdisciplinary science. We find that, while technology is a critical factor in addressing the interdisciplinary dimension of the data intensive science, the technologies developing for exa-scale data volumes differ from those that are needed for extremely distributed and heterogeneous data. Research data will continue to be highly heterogeneous and distributed and will require technologies to be much simpler and more flexible. More importantly, there is a need for both technical and cultural adaptation. We describe a vision of discoverable, open, linked, useful, and safe collections of data, organized and curated using the best principles and practices of information and library science. This vision provides a framework for our discussion and leads us to suggest several short-and long-term strategies to facilitate a socio-technical evolution in the overall science data ecosystem.

It is generally recognized that meeting society's emerging environmental science and management needs will require the marine data community to provide simpler, more effective and more interoperable access to its data. There is broad agreement, as well, that data standards are the bedrock upon which interoperability will be built. The path that would bring the marine data community to agree upon and utilize such standards, however, is often elusive.In this paper we examine the trio of standards 1) netCDF files; 2) the Climate and Forecast (CF) metadata convention; and 3) the OPeNDAP data access protocol. These standards taken together have brought our community a high level of interoperability for "gridded" data such as model outputs, satellite products and climatological analyses, and they are gaining rapid acceptance for ocean observations. We will provide an overview of the scope of the contribution that has been made.We then step back from the information technology considerations to examine the community or "social" process by which the successes were achieved. We contrast the path by which the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has advanced the Global Telecommunications System (GTS) -netCDF/CF/OPeNDAP exemplifying a "bottom up" standards process whereas GTS is "top down". Both of these standards are tales of success at achieving specific purposes, yet each is hampered by technical limitations. These limitations sometimes lead to controversy over whether alternative technological directions should be pursued.Finally we draw general conclusions regarding the factors that affect the success of a standards development effort -the likelihood that an IT standard will meet its design goals and will achieve communitywide acceptance. We believe that a higher level of thoughtful awareness by the scientists, program managers and technology experts of the vital role of standards and the merits of alternative standards processes can help us as a community to reach our interoperability goals faster.

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Progress in Oceanography j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / p o c e a n changes in sea ice extent, will have a significant impact on the arctic atmosphere. We present up-to-date freshwater transport numbers for the East Greenland Current in the Fram Strait, as well as the first map of the annual cycle of freshwater layer thickness in the East Greenland Current along the east coast of Greenland, from data obtained by CTDs mounted on seals that traveled back and forth across the Nordic Seas. We have taken advantage of the real-time transmission of some of these platforms and demonstrate the use of ice-tethered profilers in validating satellite products of sea ice motion, as well as the use of Seagliders in validating ocean forecasts, and we present a sea ice drift product-significantly improved both in space and time-for use in operational ice-forecasting applications. We consider real-time acquisition of data from the ocean interior to be a vital component of a sustained Arctic Ocean Observing System, and we conclude by presenting an outline for an observing system for the European sector of the Arctic Ocean.

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