The National Science Foundation awarded a $476,876 project grant under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) to the University of Miami on September 1, 2021 for work completing August 31, 2024.
The grant funds the CloudDrift project to develop a platform for accelerating climate research using Lagrangian data. Key products include identifying an efficient cloud-optimized data format for Lagrangian datasets tailored to community needs. An open-source library will be created to convert legacy datasets to this new format. Additionally, open-source libraries of analysis tools for Lagrangian data and algorithms from existing libraries will be developed. Online notebooks demonstrating use of the libraries are also part of the project. Sub-awards of $158,958 each were provided to Florida State University to support related work on objectives including format design, library development, and applied research analyzing geophysical and non-geophysical signals in datasets. The aim is to strengthen the national scientific enterprise's understanding of integrated earth systems through basic research support.