Data management in NOAA

NOAA has 11 terabytes of digital data stored on 240,000 computer tapes. There are an additional 100 terabytes (TB) of geostationary satellite data stored in digital form on specially configured SONY U-Matic video tapes at the University of Wisconsin. There are over 90,000,000 non-digital form records in manuscript, film, printed, and chart form which are not easily accessible. The three NOAA Data Centers service 6,000 requests per year and publish 5,000 bulletins which are distributed to 40,000 subscribers. Seventeen CD-ROM's have been produced. Thirty thousand computer tapes containing polar satellite data are being copied to 12 inch WORM optical disks for research applications. The present annual data accumulation rate of 10 TB will grow to 30 TB in 1994 and to 100 TB by the year 2000. The present storage and distribution technologies with their attendant support systems will be overwhelmed by these increases if not improved. Increased user sophistication coupled with more precise measurement technologies will demand better quality control mechanisms, especially for those data maintained in an indefinite archive. There is optimism that the future will offer improved media technologies to accommodate the volumes of data. With the advanced technologies, storage and performance monitoring tools will be pivotal to the successful long-term management of data and information.