This tutorial constitutes part of a larger general effort to promote Open Science—the practice of making research products and processes available to everyone. The particular skills developed here—using open-source tools and openly available data to improve understanding of environmental risks—are well aligned with the principles of open science. A major objective of the tutorial is to familiarize learners with NASA’s Earthdata Cloud—a resource accessible to anyone who registers for an account. The petabytes of NASA data products include results generated by various satellites that orbit the Earth measuring specific aspects of the planetary environment. The tutorial also employs open-source software for formulating and executing cloud-based computation and analysis. In learning how to access freely available data with open-source tools, users are empowered to disseminate results together with the source code and data used to generate them.
What is Open Science¶
“Open Science is the principle and practice of making research products and processes available to all, while respecting diverse cultures, maintaining security and privacy, and fostering collaborations, reproducibility, and equity.”
NASA’s Transform to Open Science (TOPS) initiative provides more resources for those wanting to learn more about the practice and principles of Open Science.