Monitoring the Earth System with xcube
The available information for monitoring the Earth has never been as abundant and accessible as today. Data volumes from Earth Observation, mathematical models and in situ measurements will continue to grow in the future. While this data richness opens unprecedented possibilities for monitoring and developing a holistic understanding of our planet, it poses challenges with respect to efficient data exploitation and fosters novel technological approaches for the joint exploitation of the different data streams. Despite considerable efforts for standardisation by different institutions in the past, data formats and models as well as interfaces for data access remain diverse, resulting in costly, bespoke solutions for finding, accessing, and processing heterogeneous input data. The xcube open-source Python package addresses such requirements and offers a suite of comprehensive tools for transforming data sets into analysis-ready data cubes. As it is designed as a framework, it is continuously extended to cater to changing needs. It integrates seamlessly into Python’s data science stack, as advocated by Pangeo, and extends it by specific data stores for the access to relevant data sets for Earth System Science and tools for data provisioning and exploitation.
