A Multi-format Client-agnostic Server for Satellite Data

The University of Wisconsin Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) Data Center has one of the largest online archives of geostationary weather satellite data in the world. The archive is over 1 PB in size, contains data from every GOES Satellite and spans 35+ years. In addition, 15 years of international geostationary satellite data are also in the archive.

For over 20 years the primary way to access satellite data from the SSEC archive has been via the Abstract Data Distribution Environment (ADDE). ADDE provides clients the ability to extract satellite imagery and subset that data spectrally and spatially. Clients must be able to communicate with a server via the ADDE protocol. Starting in 2016, a new method for data access has been implemented. This new method is client-agnostic and allows any OS, software or device to access data from the SSEC Data Center archive. Users can easily access data using anything from a web browser, to a smartphone, to a python script on a server node. Scripts can be written to download the data in any language that can issue a URL request. The resulting file will be in a user-defined standard format, including McIDAS AREA, GeoTIFF, netCDF, and PNG.

Also beginning in 2016, all geostationary satellite data in the SSEC archive will be accessible at no cost with this mechanism. We will report on the status of free and conditional archive access, provide details on scripting examples and additional file formats.