Matthew G. Noojin and Matthew A. Lazzara

The Antarctic Meteorological Research and Data Center (AMRDC) aims to bring Antarctic meteorological datasets, with an emphasis on observational data sets, to the broader community. Meteorological data presents unique challenges in storage, sharing, and description. To meet the needs of its extensive archival holdings, the research team explored several software platforms and metadata standards. The recently launched AMRDC Repository was ultimately built on open-source data platforms that encourage extensibility and interoperability. The AMRDC Repository’s information architecture seamlessly accommodates a diverse array of meteorological data formats, while also offering opportunities for collecting usage analytics as well as encouraging metadata harvesting and/or sharing with other discipline-specific repositories and databases. As a discipline-specific data center, the AMRDC aims to be an active host of real-time and archived data. Data servers and services will be a part of this effort including formal support for the Antarctic-Internet Data Distribution system. The research team’s future goals for the repository extend beyond data transfer and storage into implementing open-data standards which will allow users of meteorological data processing software to efficiently access the AMRDC Repository’s data holdings. The AMRDC will be a fully recognized Antarctic meteorological data center, for and by the community. It has the potential to be a participant in the WMO’s Antarctic Regional Climate Center network establishment efforts. This presentation will summarize the AMRDC Repository’s progress from concept to fully-fledged data repository, while outlining the research team’s commitment to FAIR repository standards (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) as well as plans for development and institutional partnerships.