Abstract
As the use of automated and web based systems increasing, metadata has become the key to sharing information between people working in different disciplines. As the interest of other earth science communities in meteorological data increases, there is a great deal of meteorological data which need to be transferred and shared. Traditionally weather data has been exchanged without metadata, i.e., the information about the data itself. It is assumed that the recipient understands the abbreviated message format, and has access to any metadata needed to determine the meaning of the transmitted data. This mode of data exchange works well within the meteorological community. However, it will be a problem for users outside of the meteorological community. Meteorological metadata will be the key to resolve the problem.The standardization of metadata within the meteorological community is becoming an important task during the last couple of years. WMO has recognized the importance of standardized metadata. A CBS expert team has been established after the CBS conference in 2000, aiming to develop a proposal for a WMO metadata standard. The team came up with the draft WMO Core Metadata Profile, version 0.2 at the end of 2003, based on the geographical standard ISO 19115.During the 14th World Meteorological Congress (Cg-XIV, 2003), a plan is approved for developing an overarching, integrated WMO Information System (WIS) that could meet the requirements of all WMO programs, affiliated international organizations and programs. The WIS architecture, functions and services will provide the solution for information exchange, management and access. Its main functional organizations include National Centers (NC), Data Collection or Product Centers (DCPC), and Global Information System Centers (GISC). China Meteorological Administration (CMA) has joined WIS program and achieved the core function requirement of GISC, including providing entry points and data service, through Beijing GISC and comprehensive metadata catalogues.In Beijing GISC, DAR (Discovery Access and Retrieval) meteorological metadata is the foundational information used for managing data resource and providing service of data discovery and access. It's also the reference information used for users to discover and retrieve data and products in WIS. An introduction is given on the background of applying DAR meteorological metadata in WIS, the WMO Core Metadata Profile, the metadata template applied in Beijing WIS portal, and how to generate DAR metadata instance in CMA. There are about 120000 corresponding DAR metadata for all the meteorological data provided by Beijing GISC.
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