SAGE: A tool for exploration of remote sensing data relating Greenland´s ice sheet and glaciers

There are many are impediments inhibiting the science community´s use of Earth science data. One of the lessons learned from NASA´s EOSDIS program is that one size does not fit all and that systems attempting to satisfy the needs of all users end up satisfying none. What users desire is to obtain data they want, in the format they want it in, when they need it. While completely fulfilling this need may not yet be fully possible, it is certainly possible to produce data in a few of the ways most useful to large segments of the user community. We have attempted address this problem by creating an application that helps with discovery and real-time analysis of highly heterogeneous data sets. This application is designed to meet Greenland-specific science needs by allowing the comparison of data and simplifying data access and delivery through the use of modular Web Services including a map server portal to the data. Visualization and analysis processes allow the user to explore the available data through the use of overlays, time series, and plots; and with user-specified aggregation, averaging, and sampling intervals. A workflow manager sequences the processes needed to fulfill user requests. The Application is known as SAGE, Services for Analysis of the Greenland Environment.