'What's open source got to do with Earth science? NASA explains'

<blockquote>'Python with Numpy and Scipy is more capable than Matlab .. Both Spyder and the iPy Notebook provide a very user-friendly environment for scientists.'

- Hoekstra (pdf)*'</blockquote>


'..we introduce Apache Open Climate Workbench (Apache OCW), an open source project furthering Earth Science.'

<blockquote>'This contribution centers around helping scientists, decision makers, software developers, educators, and interested users to better understand the Earth’s climate. First, some background on this exciting area and its connection to open source.

Earth scientists, including remote sensing experts, climate modelers, practitioners, policy makers, and decision makers, have had a hand in furthering and monitoring the open source space. For example, the climate modeling community executes its daily operations of building, testing, and validating climate and Earth system models, many of which today are open source, released under Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved licenses, and software packages that involve community contributions from very diverse participants. Similarly, the remote sensing community leverages open source packages, including Python and R, as well as non-open source, but community oriented packages, such as MATLAB, ENVI/IDL, and other software to share code, disseminate it amongst the community of experts, and also to process remote sensing data.

..

It is therefore with this scientific setting in mind that we delve further into this tale as we introduce Apache Open Climate Workbench (Apache OCW), an open source project furthering Earth Science.

Apache Open Climate Workbench

Apache Open Climate Workbench is an effort to develop a software library that facilitates, but is not limited to, climate model evaluation using model and observational datasets (including remote sensing data) in heterogeneous formats and resolutions from a variety of sources, including the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF), the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX), the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP), NASA, NOAA, and other agencies. The Apache OCW toolkit includes capabilities for data extraction, data manipulation, metrics computation, and visualization. Real world applications of the Apache OCW include research projects based on understanding atmospheric conditions, and climate patterns in the United States, Africa, the India-Tibet region, and South Africa.'

- Lewis John McGibbney, What's open source got to do with Earth science? NASA explains, June 17, 2014</blockquote>


Context

<blockquote>(The Electric Universe) - 'Dr. Michael Clarage shares new observations of some of the complexities of the Earth's electrical environment.'

(The Electric Universe) - A New Model of Magnetic Structure in Space | EU2014

(In The Electric Universe) Open Source Infrastructure, beginning of the Enterprise Nervous System (ENS)


(Open Source) - Munich: '..LiMux has been a success, has shown how flexible and effective free software is..'

Beyond democracy - 'Open source .. to positively change our society..'

(Learning - Affectivity, Action, Electricity) - '..the Kahn Academy says "Start learning now. Completely free, forever". '</blockquote>