NASA and NOAA Collaborate for Greater Science Data Discovery

NASA's Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Program and NOAA's National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS) Office of Common Services are collaborating to adopt the Common Metadata Repository (CMR), a NASA Earth science metadata system, as a common resource to enable efficient user access to both NASA and NESDIS environmental data holdings. ESDS is responsible for managing the life cycle of NASA Earth Science data, while NESDIS is NOAA's flagship repository for weather and environmental data. This agreement makes it easier for researchers to access and use data from both sources for their studies, which will lead to exciting new science.

Metadata is information about data, such as titles, descriptions, and keywords. It allows data products to be easily catalogued and discovered. Open science advocates put an emphasis on metadata as a way to make data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable—a set of open science attributes that are often combined into the acronym FAIR.

Metadata only works effectively if users can rely on every data product in a repository having the same standard information attached. This requires the use of a common metadata system. CMR is an open-source metadata system developed for NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) and has been used to catalog over a billion NASA Earth Observatory files as of 2024.

"The collaboration with NASA on CMR will enable broader use of satellite data products by allowing users to efficiently search and access data and services and fully use available data," said Heather Kilcoyne, director of the NESDIS Office of Common Services.

The non-binding agreement between NASA and NOAA will last for five years, with the possibility of an extension. The NESDIS Office of Common Services will provide the technical resources to install CMR in its cloud environment. NOAA plans to use CMR to catalog satellite data, though they will continue using other metadata systems for different use cases. NASA's ESDS will help NESDIS implement, maintain, and customize CMR in a way that makes the most sense for NESDIS data. The teams from NASA and NOAA will also collaborate to update and improve CMR as a whole, ensuring that users of NASA EOSDIS and NOAA NESDIS data will have a seamlessly compatible metadata experience as CMR evolves.

To learn more about open science and metadata, including best practices and the application of the FAIR Principles, visit Open Science at NASA and read Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)'s recommendations for FAIR metadata.