The Distributed Active Archive Center's (DAAC) primary mission is to archive and distribute data to users from various NASA data sources. However, the DAAC also creates and provides a wide range of software tools and resources to enable users to discover, locate, process, and visualize the data. Thus, the following projects are currently being addressed at NSIDC for future enhancements.

System Architecture Enhancements: NSIDC provides many individual component tools that cover the span of user needs. However, these tools reside in a variety of storage systems and are used on a variety of user interfaces. Thus, NSIDC is in the process of consolidating these tools and storage systems into an evolutionary architecture that will enhance our ability to deliver new capabilities quicker, and improve user effectiveness while simplifying maintenance and improving robustness.

Data Access and Analysis Tools: With an ever-increasing amount of available data, it has become paramount for users to quickly locate and access data as well as manipulate and transform the data. Due to NSIDC's wide range of data types, many specific individual tools were developed over time. Several tasks are in the work to evolve these tools into a more cohesive suite that gives users additional capabilities to synergistically blend disparate data types.

Data Visualization Tools: Due to recent pronounced changes in the cryosphere, there has been a huge increase in demand for visualization tools that let users of all levels of expertise quickly grasp the severity and extent of these changes. This area of data use is evolving quickly; thus, NSIDC exploits new capabilities to the possible extent.