Climate Science Meets Data Spaces: FAIR Digital Objects as a Gateway to Interdisciplinary Science

In recent years, the concept of data spaces has gained prominence, particularly in industry, as a framework for organizing and sharing data across business ecosystems and institutional and disciplinary boundaries. While the term itself is not yet widely adopted in the scientific community , it can be directly applied to research. Data spaces provide a  structured environment for integrating data sets from diversedisciplines, methods or fieldsand making themaccessible for collaboration and analysis. Climate and climate impact research, which relies on data from different fields such as meteorology, hydrology or socio-economics, is in a unique position to benefit from the application from this approach.

In line with the principles of open science, researchers are increasingly adopting frameworks that promote transparency, accessibility and reproducibility. FAIR Digital Objects (FDOs) offer effective means of achieving these goals while also enabling interactions between different data spaces. As standardized, interoperable, and machine-readable entities, FDOs link data, metadata and software, simplifying integration and promoting reuse across disciplines.

Using an example from climate research, we demonstrate how climate model data from an institutional data space, observational data from field campaigns, and satellite data (e.g., from the Destination Earth Data Lake) can be combined. By employing STAC (Spatio Temporal Asset Catalog) catalogs defined as FAIR Digital Objects facilitating the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Data Type Registry, we address a specific interdisciplinary research question. This approach not only illustrates the practical application of FDOs but also highlights how they can provide a robust framework for tackling larger and more complex scientific challenges by streamlining workflows and enabling collaboration across disciplinary and institutional boundaries.