The NERC Datagrid: enabling interoperable climate data resources

The NERC DataGrid (NDG) is a UK e-science project that provides discovery of, and virtualised access to, a wide variety of climate and earth system science data. We present an overview of key elements of the NDG architecture from a number of perspectives, from an enterprise viewpoint, to the relationship to key ISO standards, and to the underlying metadata structures. The discussion stresses the interoperability characteristics of the design, and introduces the latest experiments of interoperability with the NCAR community data portal, and plans for wider interoperability with the climate data archives held in the Earth system grid. Future initiatives, including the Big Data Analysis Network, are introduced.