ATMOS - A Data Collection and Presentation Toolkit for the Nevada Climate Change Portal

Abstract

Abstract:Climate change is the subject of intense research, covering a broad range of causes and effects over long periods of time. Large data sources are needed to support this research, prompting scientists to turn to repositories to collect and share data. Many repositories exist with various data formats and access methods, presenting a challenging environment for researchers. Data portals help to address this by providing a central location for data on a specific topic or region. The Nevada Climate Change Portal is one example, which provides data to support research on Nevada's climate. This portal was funded under an NSF EPSCoR grant with a goal of sharing resources with similar portals in New Mexico and Idaho. This paper proposes the ATMOS toolkit to help meet this goal and to address challenges facing climate change researchers. ATMOS is a pluginbased toolkit that provides Access to Map and Tabular Online Services uniformly, regardless of the underlying source. The design and construction of ATMOS are discussed, showing how the toolkit supports the Nevada Climate Change Portal, and how it can meet future needs of researchers.