Reusability-targeted enrichment of sea ice core data

Area of Science:

• Earth Science
• Climate Science
• Oceanography

Background:

• Sea ice core data is crucial for understanding climate dynamics.
• Existing data repositories often present challenges for direct reuse in new research.
• A unified and enriched database is needed to facilitate advanced scientific applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the Reusability-targeted Enriched Sea Ice Core Database (RESICE).
• To detail the methods for combining and enriching diverse sea ice core data.
• To formalize the perspective of an end-user for data reusability.

Main Methods:

• Consolidated data and metadata from 138 sources, including 107 datasets from Zenodo, Australian Antarctic Data Center, and Pangaea.
• Generated additional metadata specifically for reuse scenarios like model validation and machine learning.
• Ensured data plausibility, consistency, and traceability to original sources.

Main Results:

• Created RESICE, integrating data from 287 sea ice cores.
• Developed a framework for addressing data heterogeneity and reuse challenges.
• Made RESICE accessible via Zenodo and MOSAiC webODV, with extendability via the pyresice Python package.

Conclusions:

• RESICE enhances the reusability of sea ice core data for diverse scientific applications.
• Despite FAIR principles, cross-source data integration remains complex.
• The database and associated tools facilitate transparent and efficient data utilization for climate research.