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Tel.: +44 (0)116 252 3575

Email: mc323@le.ac.uk
Fax: +44 (0)116 252 2770


Department of Physics & Astronomy,
University of Leicester,
University Road,
Leicester, LE1 7RH,
United Kingdom.

 

ECLAT - European Cluster Assimilation Technology

Homepage of the ECLAT project, funded through the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme

ECLAT - European Cluster Assimilation Technology project

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A space plasma physics data resource for the ESA Cluster Active Archive

The ECLAT project is funded by the European Commission through the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) within the call for "Exploitation of Space Science and Exploration Data".  ECLAT is a collaboration between the University of Leicester, UK, the Institutet för rymdfysik, Sweden, St. Petersberg State University, Russia, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Finland, and the Oesterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Austria.  As stated in the opening paragraph of the ECLAT proposal document, the aim of ECLAT is to:

...provide a novel and unique data base and tools for space scientists, by providing an upgrade of the European Space Agency’s Cluster Active Archive (CAA).  The CAA is a state-of-the-art space plasma physics data repository, which will soon contain over 10 years of magnetospheric observations from the ESA Cluster multi-spacecraft mission.  Although an invaluable resource to the space plasma physics community, the multi-instrument data are difficult to mine and analyze, and lack supporting contextual data which impedes scientific progress.  The ECLAT programme will ingest into the CAA supporting data from other space- and ground-based observatories, provide data mining routines, refined data products and software tools for their visualization, and develop existing European magnetospheric modelling infrastructure to provide context for the observational data.  Such an open-access, on-line resource will go beyond anything currently available in the space plasma physics community.

 

Resources that ECLAT will provide to the CAA include ground-based contextual observations for the Cluster mission, including SuperDARN ionospheric convection measurements, MIRACLE measurements of ionospheric currents in the Scandinavian sector, detailed magnetic field modelling and Cluster footprint tracing, detailed Cluster boundary-crossings information, and state-of-the-art physics-based modelling of the magnetosphere using the GUMICS code.

The project commenced on 1 March 2011 and will continue for 36 months.  In addition to the provision of data, ECLAT will comprise four scientific workshops which aim to validate and exploit the data ingested into the CAA.

 

The major contributors to ECLAT are:

Steve Milan (project coordinator), Mark Lester, University of Leicester, UK

Minna Palmroth, Kirsti Kauristie, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland

Rumi Nakamura, Oesterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Graz, Austria

Hermann Opgenoorth, Institutet för rymdfysik, Uppsala, Sweden

Victor Sergeev, St. Petersberg State University, Russia

 

As the project develops additional information will be added here.

 

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