NASA has selected the University of Colorado Boulder for the management and operations of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System Snow and Ice Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC). Under the contract, valued at about $42 million, the DAAC will provide data and services related to sea ice, ice shelves, ice sheets, snow cover, and more. The contract period is from Aug. 1 through May 31, 2014, with four one-year extension options.
The DAAC, operated at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) since 1993, is the largest of several data management and research activities at NSIDC. NSIDC supports research into the Earth's frozen realms, offering more than 500 data products, primarily from Earth observation satellites. Researchers, commercial users, educators, and others worldwide use NSIDC data and information.
The NSIDC DAAC serves NASA's mission to understand the Earth and its response to natural and human-induced change, as part of the NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System. The DAAC processes, archives, documents, and distributes data from past and current Earth Observing System satellites, and from field measurement programs. To date, the NSIDC DAAC has stewarded and distributed more than 800 terabytes of data to researchers and other users.
The data distributed by the NSIDC DAAC provide a unique view of snow and ice processes and changes from space. Notably, researchers use NSIDC DAAC data to study ongoing changes in the cryosphere, such as the record-low extent and thinning of Arctic sea ice in 2007 and 2012, sudden events like ice shelf break-ups, and unprecedented surface melt on the Greenland Ice Sheet in 2012.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Contacts
Jane Beitler, NSIDC: jbeitler@nsidc.org or +1 303 492-1497
Katy Human, CIRES: kathleen.human@cires.colorado.edu, or +1 303-735-0196