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Web Services

at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

Steve Ansari, Rich Baldwin, Stephen Del Greco, Neal Lott, Glenn Rutledge

NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center

AGU Fall Meeting 2007

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Background

• National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)

currently archives over 1.5 petabytes of

data.

• Sources include in-situ networks,

numerical models, radar, satellite and

more.

• Manual access through web pages

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Implementing SOA

Different approaches for different datasets

• In-situ data:

REST, WaterML, OGC GIS Services

• Severe Weather Data Inventory: REST

• Model/Radar/Satellite:

REST via THREDDS Data Server

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In-Situ Data

• Network examples:

NCDC-ISD, NCDC-COOP, NCDC-15Precip, NCDC-ASOS

• Metadata (station locations) in ArcSDE / Oracle Spatial

• Time-series data stored in Oracle

• Metadata: OGC GIS Web Services (WMS and WFS)

http://gis.ncdc.noaa.gov/

• Data: Implementation of CUAHSI Web Services

Web Services will be available soon!

http://cdo.ncdc.noaa.gov/ - interactive web pages

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In-Situ Data

• Consortium of Universities for Advancement of

Hydrologic Sciences (CUAHSI)

• Partners with state and federal agencies

• Defines WaterML – a specialized schema definition for

water resources

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In-Situ Data

• REST Web Services

– Simple access to archive data in early 2008

– Provides access to data at a station or within a

country, state, county, climate division, watershed

– Easily extendable

– Uses common names or FIPS identifiers

– Authentication token

– http…/servlet/network/type/location/variable/startdate/

enddate/output

• Output types (waterML, xml, text, csv)

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In-Situ Data

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Severe Weather Data Inventory

• Geospatial database of weather phenomena

represented as point, line or polygon

Current layers: Prelim. Local Storm Reports, NEXRAD

Level-III Storm Attributes (TVS, Meso, Hail, Structure)

• REST Web Service Access:

Search based on location, data range, within area, etc…

Statistics – count, summarize by hour, day, month

Output types (csv, xml, kmz, Shapefile, GeoRSS)

• Basis for SWDI interactive web pages / applications

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/swdi

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Severe Weather Data Inventory

Example SWDI REST URLs:

(Almost a Virtual File System – hopefully intuitive!)

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/swdiws

1. /kmz/plsr/20071101:20071115

2. /csv/nx3tvs/20070501:20070601?stat=count

3. /xml/nx3tvs/20070501:20070601

?radius=5.0&center=-96.0,35.0

4. /shp/nx3hail/20070501:20070601?state=ca

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Severe Weather Data Inventory

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Severe Weather Data Inventory

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Severe Weather Data Inventory

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Model / Radar / Satellite

• The NOMADS project

• Utilize NetCDF and Common Data Model for

interoperability, decoders, etc…

• THREDDS Data Server – access to data via OPeNDAP,

NetCDF Server and OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS)

• GrADS Data Server and the Live Access Server

Current datasets in THREDDS:

NARR, RUC, GFS, NAM, NDFD, Stage-IV NEXRAD MPE,

HIRS, VTPR, SST

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• Foster research within the geo-sciencecommunities (ocean, weather, and climate)

to study multiple earth systems using

collections of distributed data

• Promote model evaluation and product

development

• Develop institutional partnerships via

distributed open technologies

• Provide distributed access to models and

associated data

NOMADS Goals

The NOAA Operational Model Archive and Distribution System

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Jan-Nov 2007

NOMADS Stats

The NOAA Operational Model Archive and Distribution System

Full File Downloads Subset Downloads

17,161,778 downloads 9,083,422 downloads

46.46 TB 0.85 TB

2.84 MB / download 100.5 KB / download

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Goals

• Ease of use

• Interoperability with existing tools

• Flexible, distributed architecture

• Data stewardship to multiple user

communities

• Efficient use of hardware and bandwidth

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Data Usage - A Few Samples

• Engineering design: Ice loads for towers, cables, wires, etc

Wind loads for buildings, etc

Heating/cooling requirements

Drainage/runoff extremes (pipes, culverts)

• Aircraft operations: Crosswinds (runway design), instrument landing systems, etc

• Space shuttle accident investigation: Nexrad data

• Ship routing and oil rig placement

• Global re-analyses for climate trends assessment, etc

• HAZMAT operations and studies: oil spills, toxic release, etc

• Weather risk management industry (now > $40 billion per year)

• Insurance investigations and verification

• Court cases and criminal investigations

• Aircraft accident investigations

• Wind energy studies: Wind farms, US and overseas

• Commercial innovation and design: Typical and extreme conditions for a new market

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Contact Info

Steve Ansari – steve.ansari@noaa.gov

NCDC Web Services website

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ws