Science Users Get Up to 12 Million MEaSUREs Program Data Products a Month

Science users are downloading millions of data products a month from 25 of the 30 MEaSUREs projects funded by NASA.  The number of users for these products has grown steadily since the first four projects distributed data in December 2008;  today there are almost 50,000 users a month. 

The focus of MEaSUREs (Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments) projects is on the creation of Earth System Data Records (ESDRs).  An ESDR is a set of observations of a given parameter of the Earth System, optimized to meet specific requirements in addressing science questions. These records are critical to such things as understanding Earth System processes, assessing variability, long-term trends, and change in the Earth System, and providing input and validation means to modeling efforts. Each of the MEaSUREs projects is responsible for making its ESDRs available to the user community. When the MEaSUREs projects are completed, the generated ESDRs will be archived and distributed by the EOSDIS data centers.

The volume and number of products delivered has increased with sharper peaks and valleys depending upon the interest by user groups. The graph below shows the three-month running average of the number of products delivered: 4 million as of June 2012, following a peak of 12 million over the three months ending in September 2011 which was driven by a surge in requests for atmospheric chemistry field campaign products. The three-month running average of the total volume was 30 TB as of June 2012, following a peak of 52 TB for the three months ending in May 2011, driven by a surge in requests for land surface products (following the earthquake in Japan in March 2011).