Data-Driven Atmospheric Sciences Using Cloud-Based Cyberinfrastructure: Plans, Opportunities, and Challenges for a Real-Time Weather Data Facility

Abstract Universities are facing many challenges: shrinking budgets, rapidly evolving information technologies, exploding data volumes, multidisciplinary science requirements, and high expectations from students who have grown up with smartphones and tablets. These changes are upending traditional approaches to accessing and using data and software. Unidata recognizes that its products and services must evolve to support new approaches to research and education. After years of hype and ambiguity, cloud computing is maturing in usability in many areas of science and education, bringing the benefits of virtualized and elastic remote services to infrastructure, software, computation, and data. Cloud environments reduce the amount of time and money spent to procure, install, and maintain new hardware and software, and reduce costs through resource pooling and shared infrastructure. Cloud services aimed at providing any resource, at any time, from any place, using any device are increasingly being embraced by all types of organizations. Given this trend and the enormous potential of cloud-based services, Unidata is taking steps to augment its products, services, data delivery mechanisms, and applications to align with the cloud-computing paradigm. Specifically, Unidata is working toward establishing a community-based development environment that supports the creation and use of software services to build end-to-end data workflows.