Overview
The Data Catalogue is provided under the aegis of the Bureau of Meteorology's Data and Information Framework, one principle of which is to make the Bureau's data and information holdings more easily discoverable, and to provide metadata essential to verifying and understanding data, data products and related information. The Data Catalogue is a place to store information about our data and information assets, to allow others to discover and understand our data. This catalogue contains metadata records describing a range of data available from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The catalogue does not yet reflect all available data; however, new metadata is being added regularly.
Other Bureau Catalogues
In addition to this Data Catalogue, the Bureau also offers a searchable list of data files* freely available via FTP; a listing of data "bundles" available as a cost-recovery subscription, the WIS catalogue* of WMO-related data "bulletins" mirrored by the Bureau (including Bureau bulletins* and bulletins from other WMO partner countries), and a searchable list of data, per station, per parameter*, that is available either freely or by subscription. The long-term goal is to integrate these into a single, cohesive discovery framework.
* Those catalogues itemise data at a more granular level, compared with the typically "collection" level of the metadata in this data Catalogue.
Metadata Content in the Data Catalogue
Each metadata record describes a dataset (or data product or related information **) held by the Bureau. The record describes the "where, when and what" of the data, its update frequency, its purpose, licensing conditions, and so on. The records also provide details on accessing the Data [ See: About Data Access and Licenses for more details ].
What Type of Data Does the Bureau Have?
The Bureau is the custodian of Australia's largest and most diverse holdings of environmental data and information.
This collection includes atmospheric, oceanographic, space and a range of surface observations, forecasts and warnings.
The data vary from single point observations to complex products such as climate datasets and Geofabric (that includes interpolation, modelling, trends, analysis and complex topologies).
Data formats vary (csv, arcAscii, netCDF, aixf, and more), and data presentation ranges from files containing numeric values through to map images (of, say, a synoptic chart). Some data is provided as a database, or via a data service.
** Hereafter referred to, for brevity, as 'data'.
Machine-to-machine Catalogue Access
Metadata records in the Bureau Data Catalogue can be accessed or harvested by CSW, by agreement with the Bureau (contact metadata@bom.gov.au).
Metadata re-use
As well as providing access urls to the data, Bureau Data Catalogue metadata records contain related legal and other important information, and so should not be re-presented / subsetted (by harvesters / software that conducts a remote query against the Bureau Data Catalogue) in such a way that the intended sense of key content in the metadata is no longer clear to users. As well as containing license details in relation to the resource (data or data product) described, each metadata record also contains a license statement (under "Metadata Constraints") about the constraints on using (including re-presenting) the metadata.
Software Acknowledgements
The Bureau's catalogue uses the GeoNetwork opensource software, with a locally developed GUI application, to better address WCAG (Web accessibility) needs. For more information about the application, please contact the Bureau of Meteorology.
CSW Catalogue Search 2.0.12-SNAPSHOT