Effects of Climate Change on Earth's Parameters - An Example of Exabyte-sized System

Abstract

Climate change at global scale affects Earth characteristics that can be detected by measuring global parameters such as Earth rotation and centre of mass variations. Similarly, changes in the harmonics of Earth’s gravitational field model are an indication of environmental changes and provide a measure of the mass redistributions causing these variations. There are four independent space geodetic techniques today that monitor Earth’s geometric and dynamic parameters very accurately: Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), Satellite/Lunar Laser Ranging (SLR/LLR), Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS). These techniques have been operational for decades, collecting a very large amount of data that after appropriate processing provide, among other things, the Earth geometric and dynamic parameters used in global climate change monitoring. The same techniques are also necessary for the establishment and maintenance of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF). To make the large amount of data more easily usable, scientists and engineers employ reduction techniques to significantly reduce the amount of raw data with minimal loss of information. It will be shown that the total amount of data available today is of the order of exabyte. Due to the complexity of data management and processing several national and international bodies have been established.