Abstract
Lossless compression can reduce climate data storage by 30-40%. In
general, further reductions require lossy compression that also reduces
precision. Fortunately, geoscientific models and measurements generate
false precision (scientifically meaningless data bits) that can be
eliminated without sacrificing scientifically meaningful data. We
introduce Bit Grooming, a lossy compression algorithm that removes the
bloat due to false- precision, those bits and bytes beyond the
meaningful precision of the data. We evaluated Bit Grooming against
competitors Linear Packing, Layer Packing, and GRIB2/JPEG2000.