World Meteorological Organization

Core activities

● Document issues with and coordinate the development and implementation of common data and metadata standards within GAW, in alignment with WIS/WIGOS, and assist Contributing Networks with utilizing the WIGOS metadata standard;
● Advise the SAGs, WMO expert teams and partners, and the GAW initiatives’ steering committees on harmonizing data management; enabling F.A.I.R. data principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, re-usable) in support of plug and play capabilities (data formats and application program interfaces, APIs) of GAW data;
● Collect and provide information on NRT (within 3 hrs of observation for real-time, within 72 hrs of observation for near-real-time) data transmission to station operators;
● Facilitate timely submission of quality-controlled data for long-term archival in the respective GAW World Data Centres (WDCs);
● Provide comprehensive and up-to-date guidance on the data and metadata submission processes, revision and re-submission, including consideration of data policy, licences, provenance and data quality as well as consistency between the data and metadata;
● Monitor the data submission to the thematic GAW WDCs and provide consolidated annual statistics on data submission, distribution, and use to EPAC SSC;
● Document/identify issues and propose solutions in support of the further development of GAWSIS, as an integral component of OSCAR/Surface, and as the central catalogue of observing facilities and observations supporting GAW, linking the WDCs and Contributing Data Centres.
● Guide GAW WDCs on implementing WMO data policies, in providing user groups with free and open access to all data, complemented with access to innovative and mature data products, together with tools for QA, data analysis and research, following WIGOS policies in particular with regards to metadata documentation;
● Guide GAW WDCs and archives of Contributing Data Centres on implementing new technologies that improve information management within GAW, as well as Contributing Networks, in-line with the evolution of WIS/WIGOS.

Interface with SAGs

● Solicit input from SAGs to articulate the need for the inclusion of new parameters in the data archives and to provide related metadata;
● Communicate to SAGs concerns related to data submissions (e.g. non-reporting stations), data quality and availability of the archived data;
● Jointly with SAGs develop and support the tools for the effective evaluation on new stations in GAW.

Interface with Expert Teams

● Work with ET-ACMQ on implementation of the quality flagging and automated data quality control tools in the GAW Wold Data Centres and data centres of the contributing networks;
● Communicate concerns related to data quality of archived data to ET-ACMQ.
Interface with GAW initiatives steering committees
● Assist Steering Committees of the GAW science-for-services initiatives with the data archival for specific applications.

Interface with WMO groups

● Advise to and interact with the Research Board on all matters related to atmospheric composition data management;
● Interact with the respective groups under the Technical Commission on Infrastructure on aspects of data management in order to harmonize and integrate atmospheric composition data with the other data management processes in WMO.

Interface with external users and partners

● Assist data archives of contributing networks and other interested parties in the application of the WIGOS metadata standard and the use of GAWSIS-OSCAR/Surface;
● Assist users in access and retrieval of data hosted at the data centres contributing to GAW.