Status Report: Data Standards and Technical Outreach

November 2022- March 2023

Ethan Davis, Ward Fisher, Hailey Johnson, Dennis Heimbigner, and Ryan May

Executive Summary

Unidata’s netCDF teams continues to engage with the Zarr community on:

1. Zarr support in both the netCDF-C and netCDF-Java libraries; and
2. the development of the Zarr version 3 specification.

Unidata continues to be active in efforts to advance the Climate and Forecast (CF) Conventions for netCDF.

Unidata continues to be active in several international standards bodies and other communities focused on data and technology including the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), and the Earth System Information Partners (ESIP).

Questions for Immediate Committee Feedback

No questions at this time.

Activities Since the Last Status Report

NCZarr/Zarr Specification Efforts

As part of implementing Zarr support in both the netCDF-C and -Java libraries, the NCZarr convention/extension has been developed to provide a clean and complete mapping between the netCDF and Zarr data models. During this work, the netCDF developers have been participating in discussions around clarification and evolution of the Zarr (version 2 and 3) specifications.

Progress has been made on the following:

• Members of Unidata’s netCDF teams have membership on the Zarr Implementation Committee and the Zarr Enhancement Protocol (ZEP) Committee and regularly participate in the bi-weekly Zarr Community and ZEP calls.

CF Conventions for netCDF activities

Unidata has a long history of involvement in the development of the Climate and Forecast (CF) Conventions for netCDF. These efforts continue with ongoing participation in development conversations on the CF GitHub repositories, participation in and help in organizing the annual CF Workshops, and participation in the governance of CF.

Progress has been made on the following:

• Planning for the 2023 CF Workshop has begun.
• Ethan Davis continues serving as chair of the CF Governance Panel.

Ongoing Activities

We plan to continue the following activities:

• Track and engage in WMO data standards efforts

• Ethan Davis is a member of the WMO Expert Team on Data Standards (ET-Data) and its Task Team for CF-netCDF (TT-CFNetCDF)
• WMO CF-netCDF Profiles have been developed for radar data, oceanographic glider data, and aircraft data. Experimental distribution of CF-netCDF data on the WMO Information System (WIS) 2.0 is planned.
• The WIS 2.0 provides similar functionality to the GTS as well as more interactive access to data. We hope to take a closer look at WIS 2.0 technologies to better understand possible connections with the IDD/LDM and how WIS 2.0 may impact and benefit the University community.

• Continue efforts to update and reorganize the NetCDF User’s Guide (NUG)

• Separate the aspect of netCDF that are useful to any user/developer, independent of which library or tool they use (i.e., data model, file formats, CDL definition, conventions, and best practices) from those that are library or language specific and
• Clarify where and how the netCDF community can ask questions about the NUG as well as discuss and contribute to the development and advancement of the NUG.

• Continue efforts to registering netCDF Media Type (application/netcdf) with IANA

• The netCDF media type has been added to IANA's provisional registry list with Unidata listed as the standards-related body supporting the effort.
• Next Step: Complete documentation and metadata needed for full registration. The updated NUG will feed into this effort

• Represent Unidata in Earth System Information Partners

• Unidata has been a Type II ESIP Partner Organization since 1999
• Ethan Davis is currently the Unidata voting representative to ESIP.

• Represent UCAR and Unidata in OGC and various OGC working groups

• Ethan Davis is the UCAR voting representative to the OGC Technical Committee, Kevin Sampson (NCAR/RAL, GIS group) is alternate voting representative.
• Participate in OGC MetOcean Domain Working Group (DWG) meetings.
• Ethan Davis is co-chair of the OGC netCDF Standards Working Group (SWG)
• Track and participate in the OGC Environmental Data Retrieval (EDR) SWG meetings.
• Track and participate in OGC Community Standard process for CoverageJSON.

New Activities

Over the next three months, we plan to organize or take part in the following:

• Deploy a draft version of the new, library independent, NetCDF User’s Guide (NUG).

Over the next twelve months, we plan to organize or take part in the following:

• Submit request for full registration of the netCDF media type with IANA

Strategic Focus Areas

We support the following goals described in Unidata Strategic Plan:

1. Managing Geoscience Data
   Unidata's various data standards efforts contribute to important tools for data producers, especially those that design and develop new data products, and for those that develop software tools for data management, analysis, and visualization.

Prepared October 2022