NextData Project: development of a web system for climate and paleoclimate data sharing.

This study is dedicated to the development of a webGIS service platform for the environment data sharing, which is carrying out in the framework of the Italian national project NextData. This project is supported by Ministry of Education, Universities and Research and a part is mainly dedicated to the study of climate change in the last 2000 years in the Mediterranean area. The system is based on the integration between the open source metadata cataloguing system provided by Geonetwork and a dedicated new database called WDBPALEO. Scope of this work is to show the design, the development and the implementation of the Environmental Data System (EDS). The EDS is designed up to now to store data from two sources: high altitude automatic stations and nonpolar ice cores and marine sediment cores (Melis et al., 2013). Since 2005, the Ev-K2 CNR Committee has promoted an integrated environmental project named SHARE (Station at High Altitude for Research on the Environment) focused on the mountain regions as primary indicators of climate change. Originally launched as a system of measurements in environmental and earth sciences in the Himalaya-Karakorum region, SHARE has later expanded its network to Europe (Apennines and Alps), Africa (Rwenzori Mt) and more recently to South America (Andes). The EDS is split in two parts: WDB and WDBPALEO database system: the first is dedicated to the storing of high altitude data from Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) of SHARE Network, and the second to paleoclimate data from non-polar ice cores and marine sediment cores. These two data sources (AWS and cores) would be the base of a timeline history for a global past climate reconstruction. The scientific interest of this service is the possibility to access into the same website to the data acquired from the network of highest altitude stations for actual climate analysis and provision and data from paleoclimate samples acquired from non-polar glaciers and sea cores. The service for the first time shares these data in a downloadable standard format for all researchers and describes with the metadata catalogue all the necessary information for the correct use of these data. The structure to store and share data, from database to Web GIS application, is based on open source software tools and they are free, useful and very capable. The present database is released with GNU license and it could potentially be customized and shared it without limitations.