Next-gen tools for big scientific data: ARM data center example

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility (www.arm.gov) provides atmospheric observations from diverse climatic regimes around the world. Currently, ARM archives over 22 million user assessable data files, primarily stored in NetCDF file format, with total data volumes close to one Petabyte. In this paper, we will discuss how ARM is currently storing, distributing, cataloging and visualizing such large volumes of multi-dimensional climate observations and model data and also describe their future plan.