Better data management is crucial to the success of scientific investigations of global change. New modes of research about the Earth, especially the synergistic interactions between observations and models, require massive amounts of diverse data to be stored, organized, accessed, distributed, visualized, and analyzed. To address technical issues of better data management, participants in Sequoia 2000, a collaborative effort between computer scientists and Earth scientists at several campuses of the University of California and at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), apply refinements in computing to specific applications. The software architecture includes layers for a common device interface, the file system, the database management system (DBMS), applications, and the network. Early prototype applications of this software include a global-change data schema, integration of a general circulation model (GCM), remote sensing, and a data system for climate studies. Longer range efforts include transfer protocols for moving elements of the database, controllers for secondary and tertiary storage, distributed file system, and a distributed DBMS.