Web Services at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)
Abstract
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) currently archives over 1.5 petabytes of climatological data from various networks and sources including in-situ, numerical models, radar and satellite. Access to these datasets is evolving from interactive web interfaces utilizing database technology to standardized web services in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). NCDC is currently offering several web services using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), XML over Representational State Transfer (REST/XML), Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) / Web Feature Service (WFS) / Web Coverage Service (WCS) and OPeNDAP web service protocols. These services offer users a direct connection between their client applications and NCDC data servers. In addition, users may embed access to the services in custom applications to efficiently navigate and subset data in an automated fashion. NCDC currently provides gridded numerical model data through a THREDDS Data Server and GrADS Data Server which offers OPeNDAP and WCS access. In-situ network metadata are available through WMS and WFS while the corresponding time-series data are accessible through SOAP and REST web services. These in-situ services are a part of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) WaterOneFlow services, a consolidated access system for hydrologic data, and comply with the WaterOneFlow specifications. NCDC's Severe Weather Data Inventory (SWDI), which provides user access to archives of several datasets critical to the detection and evaluation of severe weather, is also accessible through REST/XML services. Providing cataloging, access and search capabilities for many of NCDC's datasets using community driven standards is a top priority for the ever increasing data volumes being archived at NCDC. Providing interoperable access is critical to supporting data stewardship across multiple scientific disciplines and user types. This demonstration will showcase NCDC's latest work towards standardized web services with both server and client examples.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2007
- Bibcode:
- 2007AGUFMIN43C..03A
- Keywords:
-
- 1640 Remote sensing (1855);
- 1843 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218;
- 1631;
- 3322);
- 3329 Mesoscale meteorology