Building an Accessible, Integrated Earth Observing and Information System: The International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project as a Pathfinder

The current heterogeneity of the existing global collection of measuring assets, satellite and surface based, is a major obstacle to creating a truly integrated, globally uniform information system. Many surveys of Earth science needs over the last 40+ years mention research-to-operations (R2O) actions that are needed to develop such a system but focus mainly on making and collecting measurements with little discussion of the processing system and the integrated team of talented scientists needed to turn raw observations into usable information or the archival system needed to make reliable information readily and widely accessible. We discuss an example of addressing the problems in producing globally uniform information from such observations: the creation in 1982-83 of the data collection, processing, and archival system for the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP). ISCCP was originally built in a research environment for climate studies, but has now transitioned to a fully operational environment to extend the length of the data record for climate research. Transforming multiple satellite observations into a uniform, global set of physical information about clouds that is readily accessible was and is challenging for several reasons. In this short commentary, we reflect on the experiences and lessons learned in building the ISCCP observation-processing-archival system to address these challenges and discuss the ISCCP R2O process to serve as a pathfinder for building a global observing and information system.