AIDA, a software package for atmospheric data analysis, interpretation, and FAIR data production

Abstract. AIDA (Analysis and Interpretation of Data from the Atmosphere) is a modular software suite for analysing time series of atmospheric measurements from ground stations, ships, aircraft, drones or other platforms. Users define processing workflows as sequences of mathematical and statistical operators selected from AIDA's library. AIDA records metadata to ensure traceability and produces validated output files (NetCDF, CSV, etc.) that follow international conventions such as CF and ACDD, supporting FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reuse). Outputs from research projects using AIDA have been published (e.g., (Huynh et al., 2023)). The project stores time series and their metadata together in a self-describing format called the AIDA Vector.

Originally written in C, development now uses Python 3, NetCDF4, Udunits2, Qt5/6 and related technologies. This paper describes the AIDA Vector, the data organization, the workflow, and the surrounding tools that let users integrate and visualize data at every processing stage. AIDA is suitable for anyone responsible for atmospheric measurements.