Big Data Analytics in Earth, Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences (Special Publications)

Applying tools for data analysis to the rapidly increasing volume of data about the Earth

An ever-increasing volume of Earth data is being gathered. These data are “big” not only in size but also in their complexity, different formats, and varied scientific disciplines. As such, big data are disrupting traditional research. New methods and platforms, such as the cloud, are tackling these new challenges.

Big Data Analytics in Earth, Atmospheric, and Ocean Sciences explores new tools for the analysis and display of the rapidly increasing volume of data about the Earth.

Volume highlights include:

• An introduction to the breadth of big earth data analytics
• Architectures developed to support big earth data analytics
• Different analysis and statistical methods for big earth data
• Current applications of analytics to Earth science data
• Challenges to fully implementing big data analytics

The American Geophysical Union promotes discovery in Earth and space science for the benefit of humanity. Its publications disseminate scientific knowledge and provide resources for researchers, students, and professionals.

About the Author

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA

>span class="a-text-bold">Tiffany C. Vance, NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System, USA

Christopher Lynnes, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, USA (retd.)

Table of Contents

Contributors vii

Preface xiii

1 An Introduction to Big Data Analytics 1Erik Hoel

Part I: Big Data Analytics Architecture 29

2 Introduction to Big Data Analytics Architecture 31Thomas Huang

3 Scaling Big Earth Science Data Systems Via Cloud Computing 35Hook Hua, Gerald Manipon, and Sujen Shah

4 NOAA Open Data Dissemination (Formerly NOAA Big Data Project/Program) 65Adrienne Simonson, Otis Brown, Jenny Dissen, Edward J. Kearns, Kate Szura, and Jonathan Brannock

5 A Data Cube Architecture for Cloud-Based Earth Observation Analytics 95Peter Wang, Robert Woodcock, Ronnie Taib, Matt Paget, and Alex Held

6 Open Source Exploratory Analysis of Big Earth Data With Nexus 115Thomas Huang, Edward M. Armstrong, Nga T. Chung, Eamon Ford, rank R. Greguska III, Joseph C. Jacob, Brian D. Wilson, Elizabeth Yam, and Alice Yepremyan

7 Benchmark Comparison of Cloud Analytics Methods Applied to Earth Observations 137Christopher Lynnes, Michael M. Little, Thomas Huang, Joseph Charles Jacob, Chaowei Phil Yang, Mahabaleshwara Hegde, and Hailiang Zhang

Part II: Analysis Methods for Big Earth Data 153

8 Introduction to Analysis Methods for Big Earth Data 155Christopher Lynnes

9 Spatial Statistics for Big Data Analytics in the Ocean and Atmosphere: Perspectives, Challenges, and Opportunities 159Kevin A. Butler and Tiffany C. Vance

10 Giving Scientists Back Their Flow: Analyzing Big Geoscience Data Sets in the Cloud 177Niall Robinson, Theo McCaie, Jacob Tomlinson, Alex Hilson, Tom Powell, Rachel Prudden, Megan Fitzsimon, and Alberto Arribas

11 The Distributed Oceanographic Match-Up Service 195Shawn R. Smith, Mark A. Bourassa, Jocelyn Elya, Thomas Huang, Kevin Michael Gill, Frank R. Greguska III, Nga Chung, Vardis Tsontos, Benjamin Holt, Thomas Cram, and Zaihua Ji

Part III: Big Earth Data Applications 221

12 Introduction to Big Earth Data Applications 223Christopher Lynnes and Tiffany C. Vance

13 Topological Methods for Pattern Detection in Climate Data 227Grzegorz Muszynski, Vitaliy Kurlin, Dmitriy Morozov, Michael Wehner, Karthik Kashinath, and Prabhat Ram

14 Exploring Large Scale Data Analysis and Visualization for Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Data Discovery Using NoSQL Technologies 243Bhargavi Krishna, Kyle Dumas, and Giri Prakash

15 Demonstrating Condensed Massive Satellite Data Sets for Rapid Data Exploration: The MODIS Land Surface Temperatures of Antarctica 259G. E. Grant, D. W. Gallaher, and Q. Lv

16 Developing Big Data Infrastructure for Analyzing AIS Vessel Tracking Data on a Global Scale 279Rob Bochenek, Jessica Austin, John-Marc Dunaway, and Tiffany C. Vance

17 Future of Big Earth Data Analytics 299Christopher Lynnes and Thomas Huang

Index 311