The wide range of studies
conducted with the ISCCP datasets and the changing environment for accessing datasets over the Internet suggested the need for the Web site to provide: 1) a larger variety of information about the project and its
data products for a much wider variety of users [e.g., people who may not use a particular ISCCP
data product but could use some ancillary information (such as the map grid definition, topography, snow and ice cover)-RSB-; 2) more information about the main
data products in several different forms (e.g., illustrations of the cloud analysis method) and more flexible access to the full documentation; 3) access to more
data summaries and diagnostic statistics to illustrate research possibilities for students, for classroom use by educators, or for users with «
simple» climatology questions (e.g., annual and seasonal means); and 4) direct access to the complete
data products (e.g., the whole monthly mean cloud dataset is now available online).
Being
conducted in two phases, this project will first convert the KF Modified schedule from a legacy print format into XML and then map the results to SKOS (
Simple Knowledge Organization System), creating a dynamic
data standard that can be published as linked
data.