Presentation by Harry Lankreijer, ICOS-Carbon Portal, Lund University, Sweden. ICOS is a pan-European research infrastructure (RI) for observing and understanding the greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of Europe and its adjacent regions. The major task of ICOS is to collect and make available in a transparent manner, the high-quality observational data from its state-of-the-art measurement stations. These ICOS data – from atmosphere, ecosystem and ocean stations – will contribute to research aiming to describe and understand the present state of the global carbon cycle. The Carbon Portal will be the virtual data center that present the data products and make it available. This presentation will briefly present the work of ICOS and the Carbon Portal towards open data with FAIR principles. ICOS has an open data policy with free use, requesting the user to give appropriate credit (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 ). The Carbon Portal is developing a data catalogue using an ontology based on a semantic metadata description. This will make it possible to integrate ICOS observations with data from other RI’s as well with data of global networks. For integration, the Carbon Portal is actively following the developments of international standards for eg. metadata and data citation.

1. ICOS: Integrated Carbon Observation System
Open data to open our eyes to climate change
Harry Lankreijer
ICOS-Carbon Portal
Lund University, Sweden
BlueBRIDGE workshop: "FAIR friendly research data catalogues: How far are we? Barcelona 3 April 2017

2. ICOS: A European Research Infrastructure on greenhouse
gases and the global carbon cycle
ICOS Vision and Scientific Mission:
• fundamental understanding of the carbon cycle, greenhouse gas budgets and
perturbations and underlying processes,
• ability to predict future changes,
• verify the effectiveness of policies aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
• technical and scientific innovation,
• education and capacity building
ICOS Carbon Portal | www.icos-cp.eu
ICOS is an Research Infrastructure (RI) within the ESFRI
Since November 2015, ICOS has the status of European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC)

3. ICOS: A European Research Infrastructure on greenhouse
gases and the global carbon cycle
ICOS Vision and Scientific Mission:
• fundamental understanding of the carbon cycle, greenhouse gas budgets and
perturbations and underlying processes,
• ability to predict future changes,
• verify the effectiveness of policies aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
• technical and scientific innovation,
• education and capacity building
ICOS Carbon Portal | www.icos-cp.eu
ICOS is an Research Infrastructure (RI) within the ESFRI
Since November 2015, ICOS has the status of European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC)

4. ICOS: A European Research Infrastructure on greenhouse
gases and the global carbon cycle
ICOS Vision and Scientific Mission:
• fundamental understanding of the carbon cycle, greenhouse gas budgets and
perturbations and underlying processes,
• ability to predict future changes,
• verify the effectiveness of policies aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
• technical and scientific innovation,
• education and capacity building
ICOS Carbon Portal | www.icos-cp.eu
ICOS is an Research Infrastructure (RI) within the ESFRI
Since November 2015, ICOS has the status of European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC)

5. ICOS: https://www.icos-ri.eu/
Carbon Portal: https://www.icos-cp.eu/
ICOS RI has currently eleven member countries with
- ca 120 measurement stations distributed over
- National network of stations :The ICOS stations are run and funded
by the national funding agencies, institutes and universities.
- Data handling coordinated through Central Facilities:
- Thematic Centres: OTC, ATC, ETC and Calibration Lab
- Carbon Portal: data center
- Head office
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6. ICOS Data Products
Quality-controlled observational data
• Greenhouse gas concentrations – CO2, CH4, N2O
• Other trace gases & isotopes (CO, 14-C, …)
• Greenhouse gas and energy fluxes
• Meteorological parameters
• Ecosystem variables
Elaborated (model) products
• Advanced “visualizations”
• Flux maps in time & space (inverse modelling)
• Other model output (ecosystem responses, vegetation,…)
Syntheses reports
• Material for policy makers
• Regional “GHG statistics”
• Educational and outreach materials
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7. Greenhouse gas flux
estimates based on
inverse modelling
Atmospheric observations
Prior fluxes
Optimized flux estimates
Inversion
Transport model
Optimization
+
+ uncertainty estimates
+ optimized 3-d concentrations
Meteorological
driver fields
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8. total CO2 concentration
anthropogenic CO2
biospheric CO2
global background CO2
Footprint for Heidelberg CO2 concentration components for Heidelberg
Footprint (estimation of source area) for the station Heidelberg and
simulated CO2 time series for this station for June 2011
Ute Karstens, CP8
STILT footprint visualization
https://data.icos-cp.eu/stilt/

9. • Findable
– assign persistent IDs, provide rich metadata, register in a
searchable resource...
• Accessible
– Retrievable by their ID using a standard protocol, metadata
remain accessible even if data aren’t...
• Interoperable
– Use formal, broadly applicable languages, use standard
vocabularies, qualified references...
• Reusable
– Rich, accurate metadata, clear licences, provenance, use of
community standards...
www.force11.org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples
FAIR data

10. Clear Data license for ICOS-data products:
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and
indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any
way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

11. To have data and make them
- Usable, also on the long-term
- Exchangeable
- Citable
Have to follow international standards and use open software
Eg. on
- Metadata; INSPIRE/ISO19115/DataCite
- Data object identification (PID: EPIC/DOI)
- Citation standards: DataCite, THOR
- Use of standardized keywords
International standards:
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12. “ICOS needs an easily maintained cataloguing system to hold information
about stations, people, instruments, data objects, documents...”
From idea to implementation

13. “ICOS needs an easily maintained cataloguing system to hold information
about stations, people, instruments, data objects, documents...”
semantic web approach!
• No existing setup 100% applicable -> own development
• Prov-O as a model/inspiration
• Protegé tool used to build ontologies -> OWL
• Web application w. instantiation of ontologies, built with Scala (Java)
• Sesame triple store database (now Eclipse RDF4J) <- RDF
• Make all info available via a SparQL end point for use by humans and machines (ICOS and
external parties)
• Export metadata to (any) catalogue system (eg. ENVRI+ and EUDAT)
From idea to implementation

15. 15
Challenges:
- Transparency and provenance: description of dataflow from sensor to data-set
for ‘optimal’ (re-)use of data.
- But what is ‘complete’ ?
- Optimal reference/citation system to data sources (through PID’s): working
towards a good practice by users as well as a functioning system.
- Administration of usage tracking

16. 16
Harry.Lankreijer@nateko.lu.se
www.icos-cp.eu
www.icos-ri.eu
Thank You!

17. Greenhouse gas exchange between
Oceans and Atmosphere
[courtesy: Dorothee Bakker]
ICOS Carbon Portal | www.icos-cp.eu

18. x4
Tair, CO2, H2O profile
Tsoil, WCsoil profile
Sonic u,v,w + state variables
radiation components
fluxes (CO2, H2O, tau)
CO2, H2O, CH4, CO conc.
’Additional data’:
Leaf area index
Biomass increment
Litterfall
Soil chemistry
Other meteorological
...
Combined ecosystem &
atmospheric sites
Tower instrumentation
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19. ICOS/Carbon Portal principles
• Interoperability
• Internal across themes (air, ecosystem, ocean)
• Other (EU) infrastructures
• Global domain
• Curation
• Provenance
• Transparency
• Open data
• Web standards
• Involvement of and interaction with users
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20. Links
•Carbon Portal code
https://github.com/ICOS-Carbon-Portal
•Thredds WMS client
http://thredds.icos-cp.eu/
•Data view example
https://data.icos-cp.eu/portal/#view
•Station map
https://static.icos-cp.eu/share/stations/

21. ICOS Central Facilities and their
(heterogeneous) data streams
• Atmosphere (ATC)
• High precision and accuracy atmospheric concentrations
• Calibrated at WMO certified mole fraction scales
• CO2, CH4 and N2O, isotopes and associated tracers (CO, 222Rn)
• Ocean (OTC)
• pCO2 observations from oceans and seas
• Ecosystems (ETC)
• Ecosystem flux observations for CO2 (,CH4, N2O)
• Analysis of soil and vegetation samples
• Calibration Lab (CAL)
• Provision of working standards, QA
• Flask sample analysis
• 14C analysis
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