Mars Analysis Correction Data Assimilation - fully citable dataset at BADC.

The first publicly available, fully citable atmospheric reanalysis for the planet Mars can now be downloaded from the BADC website! 

The “Mars Analysis Correction Data Assimilation” (MACDA) dataset version 1.0 contains the reanalysis of Mars’ fundamental atmospheric and surface variables covering a period of about three Martian years (a Martian year is about 1.88 terrestrial years).

This dataset has been produced by data assimilation of observations from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft during its science mapping phase (February 1999–August 2004). In particular, the authors have used retrieved thermal profiles and total dust optical depths from the Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) on board MGS.

Data have been assimilated into a Mars global climate model (MGCM) using the Analysis Correction scheme developed at the UK Meteorological Office. The MGCM used is the UK spectral version of the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD, Paris, France) MGCM.

MACDA is a joint project of the University of Oxford and The Open University in the UK.

The dataset is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.5285/78114093-E2BD-4601-8AE5-3551E62AEF2B

For detailed information about the dataset, please refer to the recently published paper in the Geoscience Data Journal:

Montabone et al., 2014. The Mars Analysis Correction Data Assimilation (MACDA) Dataset V1.0. Geoscience Data Journal. DOI: 10.1002/gdj3.13

Publishing datasets in data journals with the CEDA:  

Publishing data in a data journal provides extra credit to researchers for making their data available, while at the same time opening the data up for re-use, increasing the potential for collaboration and strengthening the integrity of the scientific record.

CEDA’s ability to mint DOIs for datasets (in partnership with DataCite and the British Library) lays the foundations for data citation and publication. CEDA and the other NERC Environmental Data Centres have been collaborating with academic publishers including Wiley, F1000Research, Elsevier, and Nature Publishing Group to develop the systems needed for data publication, as well as promoting it to researchers and data creators.

If you would like to know more about publishing your dataset with CEDA whether it is already archived with us not, and so receive due academic credit for your work please feel free to get in touch to discuss this further.