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).

Tip

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.

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 hosts

PO.DAAC has migrated 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.

Steps to Sync from NASA DAACs

  1. Register with NASA Earthdata Login system

  2. After registering, login to the system

  3. Add NASA GESDISC DATA ARCHIVE`` applications to Earthdata

  4. Sync GLDAS land surface model outputs.

Can also create a .netrc file for permanently storing NASA Earthdata 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 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 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.

import model_harmonics as mdlhmc

# query for data
ids, urls, mtimes = mdlhmc.utilities.cmr(
    'M2I3NVASM',
    version='5.12.4',
    start_date='2025-01-01',
    end_date='2025-12-31T12:59:59',
    provider='GES_DISC',
    verbose=True,
)
display(urls[:10])

https://data.gesdisc.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/MERRA2/M2I3NVASM.5.12.4/2025/01/MERRA2_400.inst3_3d_asm_Nv.20250101.nc4
https://data.gesdisc.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/MERRA2/M2I3NVASM.5.12.4/2025/01/MERRA2_400.inst3_3d_asm_Nv.20250102.nc4
https://data.gesdisc.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/MERRA2/M2I3NVASM.5.12.4/2025/01/MERRA2_400.inst3_3d_asm_Nv.20250103.nc4
https://data.gesdisc.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/MERRA2/M2I3NVASM.5.12.4/2025/01/MERRA2_400.inst3_3d_asm_Nv.20250104.nc4
https://data.gesdisc.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/MERRA2/M2I3NVASM.5.12.4/2025/01/MERRA2_400.inst3_3d_asm_Nv.20250105.nc4
https://data.gesdisc.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/MERRA2/M2I3NVASM.5.12.4/2025/01/MERRA2_400.inst3_3d_asm_Nv.20250106.nc4
https://data.gesdisc.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/MERRA2/M2I3NVASM.5.12.4/2025/01/MERRA2_400.inst3_3d_asm_Nv.20250107.nc4
https://data.gesdisc.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/MERRA2/M2I3NVASM.5.12.4/2025/01/MERRA2_400.inst3_3d_asm_Nv.20250108.nc4
https://data.gesdisc.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/MERRA2/M2I3NVASM.5.12.4/2025/01/MERRA2_400.inst3_3d_asm_Nv.20250109.nc4
https://data.gesdisc.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/MERRA2/M2I3NVASM.5.12.4/2025/01/MERRA2_400.inst3_3d_asm_Nv.20250110.nc4

Other Data Access Examples