The Polar Research Board is pleased to announce the availability of a
new report,
"Enhancing NASA's Contributions to Polar Science: A Review of Polar
Geophysical Data Sets"
The report is the final product of a committee charged to review NASA's
strategy for providing derived, geophysical data sets to the polar
science community. It is based on about a year of study, including a
survey of more than 100 scientists who use polar geophysical data in
their day-to-day research, and was requested by NASA's High Latitudes
Program. The report identifies gaps between the data needed and what is
available, and makes recommendations for air, water, and land
measurements that NASA should take to enhance the information already on
hand. It includes recommendations on related issues, such as encouraging
NASA to look beyond satellites for some data where aircraft, automated
underwater vehicles, and some ground-based technologies might be more
appropriate ways to collect data. It notes that NASA's data-set archives
extend back as far as 20 years, in some cases, and it is important to
mine these records for information. Also, it encourages NASA to make a
greater effort to integrate its data sets with data collected in other
parts of the world for comparison purposes and to take additional steps
to better publicize the availability of data sets, make them more
user-friendly, and provide Web links to sites that contain additional
relevant information.
Copies of the report can be obtained from:
National Academies Press
Phone: 800/624-6242 or 202/334-3413
http://books.nap.edu/
Cost per copy is: $31.00 (U.S.) (discount if ordered on-line)
The report also appears on the Web at:
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10083.html
More information about the Polar Research Board and its activities is
available at: http://national-academies.org/prb