NASA Earthdata

NASA Data Distribution Centers

The NASA Earth Science Data Information Systems Project funds and operates 12 Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) throughout the United States. These centers have recently transitioned from ftp to https servers. The https updates are designed to increase performance and improve security during data retrieval. NASA Earthdata uses OAuth2, an approach to authentication that protects your personal information.

GES DISC

The Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Server Center (GES DISC) provides access to a wide range of global climate data, concentrated primarily in the areas of atmospheric composition, atmospheric dynamics, global precipitation, and solar irradiance.

GES DISC is migrating its data archive to the Earthdata Cloud, which is hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS).

If any problems contact GES DISC Help Desk at gsfc-help-disc@lists.nasa.gov or the NASA EOSDIS support team support@earthdata.nasa.gov. GES DISC support requests that you include as much of the information as possible in your contact email.

ECCO Drive via PO.DAAC

The Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) provides data and related information pertaining to the physical processes and conditions of the global oceans, including measurements of ocean winds, temperature, topography, salinity, circulation and currents, and sea ice.

PO.DAAC is migrating its data archive to the Earthdata Cloud, which is hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Tip

If any problems contact JPL PO.DAAC support at podaac@podaac.jpl.nasa.gov or the NASA EOSDIS support team support@earthdata.nasa.gov.

WebDAV

JPL ECCO Drive uses passwords generated using the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) API. This password is created at the ECCO Drive website. Use this password rather than your Earthdata password when retrieving model data from ECCO Drive. Click here for more information.

Steps to Sync from GES DISC and PO.DAAC

  1. Register with NASA Earthdata Login system

  2. After registering, login to the system

  3. Add NASA GESDISC DATA ARCHIVE and ECCO Drive applications to Earthdata

  4. Sync GLDAS land surface model outputs.

  5. Retrieve WebDAV password to access ECCO servers

  6. Sync near real-time or version 4 data

Can also create a .netrc file for permanently storing NASA Earthdata and JPL WebDAV credentials:

echo "machine urs.earthdata.nasa.gov login <uid> password <password>" >> ~/.netrc
echo "machine ecco.jpl.nasa.gov login <uid> password <webdav>" >> ~/.netrc
chmod 0600 ~/.netrc

Or set environmental variables for your NASA Earthdata and JPL WebDAV credentials:

export EARTHDATA_USERNAME=<uid>
export EARTHDATA_PASSWORD=<password>
export ECCO_PASSWORD=<webdav>

NASA Common Metadata Repository

The NASA Common Metadata Repository (CMR) is a catalog of all data and service metadata records contained as part of NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). Querying the CMR system is a way of quickly performing a search through the NASA Earthdata archive. Basic queries for the granule names, URLs and modification times of NASA granules held in DAACs are available through the cmr routine in the utilities module. For AWS instances in us-west-2, CMR queries can access urls for S3 endpoints.

Other Data Access Examples