ACROSS: Daten-Highway für die Atmosphärenforschung – Lidar, Radar und KI im Einklang

Research into climate change and new anthropogenic influences – such as space travel – requires continuous, high-resolution data from lidar, radar and camera systems. However, at remote research stations such as ALOMAR (Norway), the transfer and analysis of terabytes of data present a bottleneck.

Our solution:

ACROSS creates a high-performance IT infrastructure that optimises data flow:

• On-site (e.g. ALOMAR): An edge computing cluster handles the real-time pre-processing of lidar, radar and camera data – including intelligent compression to speed up transmission. 
• At the IAP: A high-performance file system enables efficient storage and processing. Here, we develop AI-based analysis methods that identify patterns in combined lidar and radar data – for example, regarding aerosol distribution or atmospheric dynamics. 

Why this is important

The integration of radar data (e.g. for cloud and wind analysis) provides a multidimensional image of the atmosphere. The automated pipeline reduces manual work and speeds up research.