This splinter session complements the joint session ESSI1/AS4.17/CL4.8. The current climate debate is highlighting the importance of free, open, authoritative sources of quality climate data that are available for peer review and for collaborative purposes. It is increasingly important to allow disparate organizations around the world to share climate data in an open manner, and to perform dynamic processing of climate data via web based services, using common "community agreed" standards without having to change their internal systems or the language that they use internally to describe their data.
We encourage discussion of methods for collection and preservation of provenance metadata, which is crucial to long-term and interdisciplinary use of climate data. We also wish to identify archives of quality climate data, and make these available for interdisciplinary work. Focus will be on applications and opportunities for enhancing existing data exchange standards for use with climate data.