BADC celebrates 20 years

Posted on October 24, 2014  (Last modified on October 19, 2023) • 2 min read • 306 words

The Centre for Environmental Data Archival (CEDA) celebrated 20 years of operation for the British Atmospheric Data Centre this week.

Staff both past and present gathered to share stories, cake and to hear from the first head of the BADC, Peter Allan, and the present director of CEDA, Bryan Lawrence.

  

After cutting the cake, Bryan Lawrence, CEDA’s director, said that,

 

“The BADC’s 20th birthday is a real testament to the what has been achieved by it’s dedicated team over the years. It’s been an honour to work with the team as the BADC has grown from humble beginnings to the centre we see today; duly recognised internationally for it’s excellence in data management, community engagement and support.”

Peter Allan, the first group leader for the BADC, also took the opportunity to recall the BADC’s early days and on the technological challenges they faced. Reflecting on the advances he has seen in the BADC’s services and technology he said,

"As someone who was there at the start of the BADC, I am amazed at how the technology has advanced and the things that we can now do with it. The storage capacity has increased a hundred thousand times and users can have their own virtual machines close to the data. This enables science that was completely impractical 20 years ago."

20 years ago the BADC grew out of the Geophysical Data Facility hosted by SERC. Since then its user community has grown globally, with over 5000 users a year accessing an archive now holding in excess of 140 million files. The BADC, within CEDA, has seen many changes during this time and looks forward to those new challenges always on the horizon.

Here’s the next 20!

Happy birthday BADC.