| Climate change is the subject of intense research throughout the world. This research is broad in scope, covering a wide range of causes and effects over massive amounts of time. As a result, similarly large data sources are needed to support this research. Researchers have turned to data repositories to collect and share large data sets. There are many types of data repositories serving the broad needs of researchers. Unfortunately, there are also a broad range of data formats and access methods ranging from simple file downloads, to standard data access protocols and data formats. This presents a challenging environment for climate change researchers who are looking to explore and identify data for their research.;Data portals help to address this by providing a central location for data on a specific topic or region. The Nevada Climate Change Portal is one example, and provides data to support research on Nevada's climate. This portal was funded under an EPSCoR grant along with similar portals in New Mexico and Idaho. One goal of the Nevada Climate Change Portal is to help share data between these EPSCoR funded portals, and to provided data to support Nevada climate change research.;This thesis proposes the ATMOS toolkit to help meet this goal and to address some challenges facing climate change researchers. ATMOS is a web-based toolkit that provides Access to Map and Tabular Online Services. It uses a plugin system to add support for various data sources, and presents data in a uniform way, regardless of the underlying source. The design and construction of ATMOS is discussed, showing how it meets the unique needs of the Nevada Climate Change Portal, and how it can be extended to meet future needs. The ultimate goal is to integrate ATMOS with the Nevada Climate Change Portal to provide public access to Nevada's climate change data. |
