Several current and former NSF Unidata Program Center staff members have been recognized with the American Geophysical Union's 2024 Open Science Recognition Prize for their work as part of a team of Major Contributors to the CF Conventions.
The NSF Unidata Program Center's Ethan Davis, along with former NSF Unidata staff members Russ Rew and John Caron, are among a group of 45 individuals from a variety of U.S. and international organizations who are being honored for their contributions to the creation and evolution of the NetCDF Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata Conventions.
The CF metadata conventions are designed to promote the processing and sharing of files created with the netCDF API. The conventions define metadata that provide a definitive description of what the data in each variable represents, and the spatial and temporal properties of the data. This enables users of data from different sources to decide which quantities are comparable, and facilitates building applications with powerful extraction, regridding, and display capabilities. The CF convention includes a standard name table, which defines strings that identify physical quantities.
In addition to their contributions to the CF metadata conventions, Davis, Rew, and Caron have all been involved in the development different aspects of NSF Unidata's network common data form (netCDF).
About the CF Conventions
The CF Conventions were conceived more than 20 years ago to facilitate the sharing of data in a form that could be understood by both humans and machines. Initially written by a small international team on their own initiative, the conventions now rely on the grassroots involvement of anyone interested in contributing. By defining metadata standards, the project has established a sound foundation for an interoperability that facilitates sharing of climate and weather data.
Contributions by the CF Conventions group have enabled substantial scientific advances. Perhaps the most visible activity reliant on the CF Conventions is the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), which is coordinated by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). With participation by 49 research groups worldwide, climate model simulation results from hundreds of experiments are made freely available to researchers and a variety of stakeholders. The nearly 20 terabytes of CMIP data written in conformance with the CF conventions have provided material for thousands of research papers that have been heavily relied on by scientists preparing the high-profile series of IPCC Climate Change Assessment Reports. Without the common data format adopted by all the contributing groups, this influential research would have been technically far more difficult and much less efficient.
The group has worked to ensure that the CF standards are transparent, extensibile, and general usable, making them pivotal in fostering interoperability across institutional and disciplinary boundaries. The CF community welcomes new contributions and new applications of CF, answers questions about use of the existing conventions, and maintains backward compatibility as the conventions develop, bearing in mind the longevity of data written according to old versions. The CF process of open, yet rigorous, peer review before proposed changes can be adopted reflects the principles of open science and significantly contributes to its advancement.
About the AGU Open Science Recognition Prize
The AGU's Open Science Recognition Prize is awarded to a person or team for outstanding work in advancing Open Science related to Earth and space science and its impact globally. The winners are chosen from nominations across the Earth and space science community.
Honorees will be recognized at AGU24, which will convene more than 25,000 attendees from over 100 countries in Washington, D.C. and online everywhere on 9-13 December 2024. Reflecting the theme What's Next for Science at AGU24, the Honors Reception will recognize groundbreaking achievements that illustrate science's continual advancement, inspiring the AGU community with their stories and successes.
AGU (www.agu.org) is a global community supporting more than half a million advocates and professionals in the Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, AGU aims to advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct.
