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Cloud Access

NCEI Data in the NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD) Program

The NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD) Program is a coordinated effort to make NOAA data resources accessible through private sector cloud infrastructure with the goal of making data publication more cost effective and sustainable. 

The NOAA data collection infrastructure, which includes satellites, radars, weather models, and other sources, generates tens of terabytes of data every day. While these data are available to the public, their volume can make them difficult to download and work with. The NODD addresses this issue by developing partnerships to make NOAA's open data publicly available on commercial cloud platforms. These partnerships leverage private industry’s cost efficient, high performance computing and analytics infrastructure to improve public access to NOAA data, and help avoid the costs and risks associated with federal data access services.

Education and Research Support in the Cloud

Amazon Web and Google Cloud Platform both offer free trials and grants for research and education. There are two free trial options for each provider: “12 Month Trial,” which includes access to all cloud services, and “Always Free,” which allows access to a limited selection of data products, tools, and other services. Research and education grants are also available for students and faculty working with academic institutions through an application process.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Data Access

Select datasets from the following product areas are available through NOAA’s cloud partners. This list will be updated as more data becomes available.

Weather and Climate Models Radar Satellite

GOES-16, 17, and 18 data for a variety of instruments and products are available on Amazon, Google, and Microsoft platforms via the NODD dataset list.

Resulting from the latest innovations in NOAA’s satellite fleet, these data products provide enhanced and timely information on atmospheric and surface conditions, including severe weather monitoring, cloud and moisture movements, lightning activity, and much more. As the NODD continues, it is likely that more NOAA climate and weather products will become available through cloud platforms.

Amazon Web Services

Download the full period of record from GOES-R operational and provisional data from the Amazon S3 Storage or from within the Amazon computing environment.

Google Cloud Platform

Download the full period of record for GOES-R operational and provisional data from the Google big Query or from within the Google Cloud computing Environment.

Amazon Web Services

A complete historical archive of NEXRAD Level-II data:

Google Cloud

A complete historical archive of NEXRAD Level-II and Level-III data:

Open Science Data Cloud (OSDC) Environmental Data Commons

A complete historical archive of NEXRAD Level-II data:

NCEI releases the NOAA NEXRAD archive inventory as a reference for users in support of the NODD efforts. The inventory contains comma separated (CSV) text files listing the original archive files (in tar format) and the individual volume scan files present inside the tar files.

A select group of Climate Data Records (CDRS) from the following thematic areas are now accessible through Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services: