Thank you for writing the above well-informed comment. One important observation at the top of the comment is: "data products ... are often purpose made for th

Thank you for writing the above well-informed comment. One important observation at the top of the comment is: "data products ... are often purpose made for the goals of the people that use them" -- and this explains a lot of the atomization and overlap among these data. You can see this effect across NASA science data (i.e., not just Earth). A group of investigators sees the potential to make an innovative new measurement, and develops the instrument or retrieval system to get it. This can be a decade-long process. The best people to talk about the features and limitations of that data are, clearly, that team. And they are generally quite approachable for other in-discipline specialists at the usual conferences and workshops. There will be published documents as well, but they are best if you already know what you want. But these methods do not help outsiders! It can be hard for out-of-discipline people to discover what data (among what's available) would be helpful or applicable for their purposes. It can be very tricky - "you can't use data X for purpose Y because we filter effect Z out of X, and Z is critical to doing Y." One other general point - related to the data maturity pipeline. NASA is chartered with developing, exploiting, and archiving novel measurements. NOAA is chartered with operational analysis and use. So there is a handoff needed there, and a difference in emphasis.