1 Web Services at NOAAs National Climatic Data Center Steve Ansari, Rich Baldwin, Stephen Del Greco, Neal Lott, Glenn Rutledge NOAAs National Climatic Data Center AGU Fall Meeting 2007

2 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

3 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

4 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) Data: Implementation of CUAHSI Web Services Web Services will be available soon! - interactive web pages

5 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

6 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)

7 In-Situ Data

8 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

9 Severe Weather Data Inventory Example SWDI REST URLs: (Almost a Virtual File System – hopefully intuitive!) 1. /kmz/plsr/ : /csv/nx3tvs/ : ?stat=count 3. /xml/nx3tvs/ : ?radius=5.0&center=-96.0, /shp/nx3hail/ : ?state=ca

10 Severe Weather Data Inventory

11 Severe Weather Data Inventory

12 Severe Weather Data Inventory

13 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

14 Foster research within the geo-science communities (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

15 Jan-Nov 2007 NOMADS Stats The NOAA Operational Model Archive and Distribution System Full File DownloadsSubset Downloads 17,161,778 downloads9,083,422 downloads TB0.85 TB 2.84 MB / download100.5 KB / download

16 Goals Ease of use Interoperability with existing tools Flexible, distributed architecture Data stewardship to multiple user communities Efficient use of hardware and bandwidth

17 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

18 Contact Info Steve Ansari – NCDC Web Services website