The NOAA GEO-IDE UAF ERDDAP
Easier access to all of NOAA's data |
Brought to you by NOAA NMFS SWFSC ERD |
The NOAA GEO-IDE UAF ERDDAPTHIS ERDDAP INSTALLATION IS A WORK-IN-PROGRESS, FOR EXPERIMENTAL USE ONLY.The goal of this web site is to give you easier access to all of NOAA's data. ERDDAP (the Environmental Research Division's Data Access Program) is a data server that gives you a simple, consistent way to download subsets of scientific datasets in common file formats and make graphs and maps. NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) is the U.S. federal agency with a mission to understand and predict changes in Earth's environment and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet our Nation's economic, social, and environmental needs. GEO-IDE (the NOAA Global Earth Observation - Integrated Data Environment initiative) is a set of guidelines and best practices that establish a framework for improving the interoperability of NOAA's environmental information management resources. GEO-IDE is a project of the NOAA Data Management Integration Team (DMIT). UAF (the Unified Access Framework) is a NOAA-wide effort to develop a gridded dataset integration capability. The capability is being developing using several de facto standards: netCDF, which provides the abstract data model, software libraries and a persistent binary format; the Climate and Forecast (CF) metadata conventions; the OPeNDAP protocol for web transport of data subsets; THREDDS XML catalogs which provide a distributed topology connecting data suppliers; and an OGC compatibility layer that provides access to the grids through WMS and WCS. The initial focus has been to develop a NOAA-wide UAF THREDDS catalog of CF-compliant datasets (e.g. model outputs, satellite products, High Frequency radar observations, etc.) and to connect the catalog to other data servers (e.g., LAS and ERDDAP (this web site!)) and several popular client tools (e.g. MatLab, Google Earth) to enable direct access and use of the datasets. ERDDAP (the NOAA NMFS SWFSC Environmental Research Division's Data Access Program) is a data server that gives you a simple, consistent way to download subsets of scientific datasets in common file formats and make graphs and maps. This ERDDAP installation makes all of the datasets in the NOAA-wide UAF THREDDS catalog and many additional datasets available via ERDDAP. The added benefits of using ERDDAP are:
In it, a scientist uses ERDDAP to download ocean currents forecast data from NOAA's NODC/NCDDC to model a toxic spill in the ocean using NOAA's GNOME software (in 5 minutes!). Thanks to Rich Signell. (One tiny error in the video: when searching for datasets, don't use AND between search terms. It is implicit.) |
Start Using ERDDAP:
|
Protocol | Description |
---|---|
griddap datasets |
Griddap lets you use the OPeNDAP hyperslab protocol to request data subsets, graphs, and maps from gridded datasets (for example, satellite data and climate model data). griddap documentation |
tabledap datasets |
Tabledap lets you use the OPeNDAP constraint/selection protocol to request data subsets, graphs, and maps from tabular datasets (for example, buoy data). tabledap documentation |
WMS datasets |
The Web Map Service (WMS) lets you request an image with data plotted on a map. WMS documentation |
Converters
In addition to serving data, ERDDAP has some handy converters:
Metadata
ERDDAP has Web Accessible Folders (WAF) with FGDC (?) and ISO 19115-2/19139 (?) .xml metadata files
for all of the geospatial datasets.
RESTful Web Services
You can bypass ERDDAP's web pages and use ERDDAP's RESTful web services
(for example, for searching for datasets, for downloading data, for making maps)
directly from any computer program (for example, Matlab, R, or a program that you write)
and even from web pages (via HTML image tags or JavaScript).
documentation