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North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies

Inspire. Advance. Engage.

Image: flickr.com/Ken Lane

Overview

26 June 2025

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Cooperative Institute for �Satellite Earth System Studies (CISESS)

NCICS’ primary activity is operating the Asheville location of CISESS — a NOAA

Cooperative Institute formed as a partnership between NC State and the University of Maryland. ��The grand scientific challenge of CISESS is to enhance our understanding of how the natural components of the Earth system — atmosphere, ocean, land, and biosphere — interact with human activities as a coupled system.

ncics.org/cisess

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Climate / Weather Assessments
Research to Operations
Cloud Transition
AI/ML Research
Climate Literacy, Outreach, Engagement, and Communications
Innovative, High Risk Research
Workforce Development

NCICS Research and Innovation

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Engagement | Outreach | Climate Information Services

Workforce

Development

Future scientific and technical workforce for NOAA and its users

Develop diversity through training

Education and

Outreach

Develop next generation skilled scientists, extending reach to underserved communities

Outreach to students and general public

User / Sector Engagement

Reach industry sectors, associations and build partnerships to support decision makers and policy makers

Advance & improve use, access &value of environmental information

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NCICS | Research Projects

Assessments

State Climate Summaries update (50 states plus Puerto Rico/USVI)
IPCC Working Group III Seventh Assessment Report
Nature Assessment (transitioning to non-Federal project)

From the NCA5:

Taelyn B., Grade 11 “Endangered West”

https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/

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One of the biggest things we do at NCICS is support and contribute to national and regional assessments of climate change. These are basically big-picture climate reports that pull together the best available science to help people understand what’s happening with our climate and what it means for decision-making.

NCICS leads production of the National Climate Assessment, the premier federal report on climate information, providing data on hurricanes, extreme precipitation, drought, sea level rise, and many other topics relevant to NC.

NCICS also leads the development of NOAA’s State Climate Summaries, which provide the latest information on observed and projected climate conditions in NC and all other US states and territories.

NCICS, alongside the NC Dept of Environmental Quality and the NC Climate Change Interagency Council, led the development of the NC Climate Science Report. This report served as the scientific foundation for the development of the NC Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan, a comprehensive framework to ensure climate resilience actions across NC.

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NOAA NCEI and

NOAA Data In the Cloud

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NOAA Mission:

To understand and predict changes in climate, weather, ocean, and coasts,

to share that knowledge and information with others, and

to conserve and manage

coastal and marine ecosystems and resources.

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A quick overview into how NOAA is structured—because it helps explain where we, and the data, fit in.

At the top, of course, is NOAA—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Their mission is pretty broad but important:

Now under NOAA, there are a few different branches or line offices. One of those is NESDIS—the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. You can think of NESDIS as the satellite and data branch of NOAA. It’s responsible for collecting and managing tons of environmental data, especially from satellites.

And within NESDIS is NCEI—the National Centers for Environmental Information. That’s where we do a lot of our work. NCEI is kind of like NOAA’s data library and analytics hub. It’s where a lot of NOAA’s data lives, gets curated, and turned into usable information for researchers, policymakers, and the public.

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NOAA Data: High Impact, Global Reach

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Scientific Data Stewardship

NOAA Observing Systems

Research-quality products for �decision making

Climate & Weather

Climate Assessments
Climate Normals
Billion $ Disasters
Drought Monitoring

Oceans & Coasts

Tsunami Warning
Coastal Digital Elevation Models
Extended Continental Shelf
World Ocean Database

Geophysics

Space Weather
World Magnetic Model

NOAA NCEI

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Transitioning Data to the Cloud

Making NOAA’s vast environmental data archives freely and easily accessible �via cloud computing providers is a key priority for NESDIS and NCEI.

Building on the success of the NOAA Open Data Dissemination program, NCICS is developing a workforce with the skills and experience required to support this �fundamental transformation in the way NOAA manages and delivers data.

Image: freepik.com/natanaelginting

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NOAA Line Offices

CISESS NC: Cloud Data Broker

NESDIS

NMFS

NOS

NWS

OAR

OMAO

Federal Security Boundary

NODD Website

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NOAA generates tens of terabytes of data a day from satellites, radars, ships, weather models, and other sources. While these data are available to the public, it can be difficult to download and work with such large data volumes. The NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD) Program provides public access to NOAA's open data on commercial cloud platforms through public-private partnerships. These partnerships remove obstacles to the public use of NOAA data, help avoid costs and risks associated with federal data access services, and leverage operational public-private partnerships with the cloud computing and information services industries.

These partnerships are designed to not only facilitate full and open data access at no net cost to the taxpayer, but also foster innovation by bringing together the tools necessary to make NOAA's data more readily accessible.

There are six NOAA line offices from where the data in NODD comes from.

OMAO: Office of Marine and Aviation Operations which manages and operates research and survey ships, and specialized environmental data-collecting aircraft.

OAR: Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research which is the engine that drives a lot of the next-gen science and technology that NOAA depends on in order to produce their products and services.

NWS: National Weather Service provides weather, water, and climate forecasts and warnings.

NESDIS: National Environmental, Satellite, Data, and Information Services

NOS: National Ocean Service

NMFS: National Marine Fisheries Service science and management of oceans habitats and resources

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NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD)

Providing free & open access to hundreds of NOAA’s valuable environmental datasets

via three cloud service providers (CSPs)

Atmospheric
Oceanic
Fisheries
Weather
Climate
Near Real-Time

Period of Record
Forecasting products
Model Data
And More!

Available Data Types:

14PB

6PB

2PB

<1PB

24PB

70+PB

41PB

66PB

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

NODD Website

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CSP Public Datasets Programs

NODD is a Public-Private Partnership with three Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) that host NOAA data in their public datasets programs:

Microsoft - Planetary Computer
AWS - Registry of Open Data
Google Cloud - Marketplace

noaa.gov/nodd

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Additional datasets can be requested by users of either their CSP or of NODD.

https://www.noaa.gov/nodd/datasets

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NODD Accelerates Open Science & Interoperability

Open Data

Open access to environmental data via NODD

Open

Science

Open Products

Open access to research products, results, and new data for reproducibility

Open Reproducible Analysis

Open scientific process and

reusable analytics pipelines

NODD Incorporates FAIR principles, and open source software, too!

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NODD works with others to allow for data innovations.

Interoperability = Compatibility

We know that interoperability or compatibility of diverse datasets is key to supporting users and driving innovation. NODD supports and advances dataset compatibility by working with the CSPs to develop a consistent and centralized location of information with documentation on the cloud. This is what enables users to leverage cloud tools, scalability and processing.

NODD links users with NOAA’s well-organized, high-quality data. Users and stakeholders can trust in that curation, and spend their labor further down the data value chain, unleashing new economic potential.

NODD also works with our partners to gather user feedback on the need for Analysis Ready or cloud ready formats and standard metadata to maximize data use. Analysis Ready formats make the data more accessible in a performant manner, saving researchers and private enterprise time and money on compute costs.

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Office Hours Highlights

NODD Office Hours

Connecting Data Users to NOAA Scientists & Cloud Subject Matter Experts

Visit NOAA.GOV/NODD for resources

High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR)
S-100/S-111 Forecast Guidance of Surface Water Currents
Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS)
National Water Model (NWM)
Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-R) Cryosphere Products
Emergency Response Imagery (ERI)
Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) via Google & AWS

Eight Office Hours To Date

Reaching over 750 registrants

Hosted in partnership with our three cloud service providers (CSPs)

Updates on products and cloud access options

Hands on notebook & CSP tools training

Open Q&A with NOAA & cloud subject matter experts

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Satellite Data

Available via NODD

NOAA LEO: SNPP, NOAA-20 & NOAA-21
NOAA GEO: GOES-R 16, 17, 18, 19
Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) Himawari 8 & 9
Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) GK-2A

These observations are valuable because they provide GLOBAL information about the atmosphere, cryosphere, land and surface hydrology, oceans and coasts, and space weather
Observations inform weather prediction, water availability forecasting, hurricane & tropical storm monitoring, marine weather forecasts, climate assessments, and climate prediction

Key points: satellite data available on NODD overview

Providing uninterrupted and near real time data takes a lot of resources, effort, and planning

Why it is worth the effort!

How do the satellites orbit?

Low earth orbit: LEO closer to Earth’s surface than MEO and GEO satellites, polar-orbiting so orbits from pole to pole, providing global coverage as the satellite orbits, the Earth is rotating
Geostationary Orbit: GEO, further from Earth’s surface, matched orbit to Earth’s rotation so it stays at the exact same spot over the earth (can’t get global coverage from ONE single satellite)

Low earth orbit satellite data, which includes:

NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System, or JPSS, including the Suomi National Polar-orbiting partnership, and NOAA 20 and 21, available on all three CSPs.

Note that near real-time JPSS data is pushed to NODD via the NESDIS Common Cloud Framework, or NCCF, whereas historical data is archived in the Comprehensive Large Array Satellite System or CLASS, now in the cloud. To provide the full period of record via the cloud requires significant effort, planning, and expense by NESDIS. But it will pay dividends.

In addition, NODD provides geostationary satellites:

NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, including data from 16, 17, 18 & 19 are available on AWS and Google Cloud, with a subset of products on Microsoft Azure..
The Japan Meteorological Agency’s (JMA) Himawari 8 & 9 provides geostationary coverage of the western North Pacific and parts of the southern Hemisphere and Indian Ocean.
The Korea Meteorological Administration’s (KMA) GK-2A data via NODD is possible because NOAA serves as the single U.S. authorized public access point for all users in the US, the result of an international agreement between the two governments.

NODD facilitates end users’ access and use of high volume NOAA satellite data via the cloud, allowing for scalability, ensuring sustainable, stable access by users – especially those needing near real-time data – and supporting a high volume of users.

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Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES)

Monitoring Sun and Space Weather

Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) and Extreme Ultraviolet and X-ray Irradiance Sensors (EXIS)

Provide imaging of the sun and detection of solar flares.

Compact Coronagraph-1 (CCOR-1)

Images the outer layer of the sun’s atmosphere to detect coronal mass ejections.

Space Environmental In-Situ Suite (SEISS) and Magnetometer

Monitors energetic particles and magnetic field variations.

Monitoring Weather and Environmental Phenomena on Earth

Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI)

Primary instrument for imaging Earth’s weather, oceans, and environment.

Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM)

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Key points: GOES naming structure

instruments on the satellites, examples of ABI-commonly used

GOES covers about half the globe

Collaboration between NOAA and NASA

GOES-U (now GOES-19) was launched in 2024 and operates as NOAA’s GOES East satellite, while GOES-T (now GOES-18), was launched in 2022 and is NOAA’s operational GOES West satellite.

GOES-R (now GOES-16), launched in 2016, and GOES-S (now GOES-17) launched in 2018, both serve as on-orbit backups.

Together, GOES East and GOES West watch over more than half the globe — from the west coast of Africa to New Zealand and from near the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle.

The GOES-R Program is a collaborative effort between NOAA and NASA. NASA builds and launches the satellites for NOAA, which operates them and distributes their data to users worldwide.

Info about the images on the right: top right- hurricane Milton, bottom right: California’s Park Fire July 2024

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Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS)

NOAA/NASA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP), NOAA-20, NOAA-21

Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) and Cross-Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS)

Provides detailed information on atmospheric temperature and moisture

Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES)

Helps scientists understand the links between energy being absorbed and emitted by Earth’s climate, as well as properties of the atmosphere that affect energy balance

Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS)

Collects visible and infrared images and global observations of the land, atmosphere, cryosphere, and oceans

Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS)

Tracks the health of Earth’s ozone layer and measures the concentration of ozone and other aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere.

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Key points: global coverage twice daily, provides majority of data that informs numerical weather forecasting, VIIRS example, adding a new instrument Libera for better measuring trends in Earth’s energy imbalance

JPSS satellites orbit Earth from pole to pole 14 times a day, ensuring full global coverage twice daily. In doing so, they provide the majority of data that informs numerical weather forecasting in the US and deliver critical observations during severe weather events like hurricanes and blizzards.

Figures: VIIRS instrument shows power outages following hurricane Beryl, in east Texas (day-night band)

In addition to the four instruments on NOAA-21 and -20, JPSS-4 will include Libera, an instrument that will improve our understanding of trends in Earth’s energy imbalance and the changing climate.

Question- Libera WILL improve understanding…is it not yet in operation- looking like launch in 2027

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OISST - NOAA’s Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature

About the Data

Global ¼° resolution SST Climate Data Record
1981-present
Daily
Incorporates data from satellites, ships, buoys, and Argo floats
v2.1 since 2020, v3 in-progress

Uses

Climate monitoring (trends, anomalies, etc.)
Forecasting (ENSO, storms, etc.)
Ecology
Many more!

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Satellite data is crucial because it is used for so many different atmospheric variables and can be used on its own or in conjunction with other observations. An example of this is a product that NCICS helps produce and maintain: NOAA’s Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature CDR which happens to be a product that is co-produced and maintained by NCICS.

It is a global SST CDR at quarter degree resolution. The record covers 1981 to the present at daily temporal resolution. As I mentioned before it incorporates satellite data (AVHRR Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer sensor), as well as other observations: ships (as they travel they take in sea surface temp data), buoys (locations seen in the top right picture), and Argo floats (schematic in the bottom right: Argo floats are deployed, they float for a bit then take a trip to specific depths then travel back up to the surface, taking a temp profile along the way).

Especially the top right figure illustrates why many data products incorporate more than one source of observations: if we just use buoys and nothing else, we would be missing so much of the open ocean, particularly in the SH, and closer to the poles. Satellites help us get data in regions in situ can’t reach or isn’t practical.��Currently OISST v2.1 is in use but a new v3 is in-progress. OISST and products like it are used in so many cases from maybe the expected climate monitoring and forecasting to SST impacts on marine life (and impacts on coastal communities) and even for calibrating proxy records such as corals and coral fossils.

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Accessing OISST Data

Method 1 - Direct Download

https://www.noaa.gov/information-technology/open-data-dissemination

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First and probably most simply, is to download the files directly to you local machine. This can be good if you aren’t working with a ton of data and maybe not familiar with cloud computing or AWS yet. Navigate to the NODD Program Datasets tab (the last one on the main page), then you can scroll through the different categories. Feel free to explore, but for this example we will stay in the CDRs (or climate data records) section. What climate variable does OISST provide? Sea surface temperature, so we need to go to “Oceanic.” Then find SST Optimum Interpolation. Once you are on the OISST page, there are a few ways to directly download data you want, we’ll go with the most intuitive which is to select “Download.” Once on the download page, it will look like a normal file directory. You can pick out files based on the year and month you are looking for and see all the daily files in that folder and download them individually. �

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Accessing OISST Data

Method 2 - AWS

https://www.noaa.gov/information-technology/open-data-dissemination

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If you are working with large amounts of data and don’t want them saved on your local machine and possibly want access from multiple computers/collaborations, you can use AWS. The first step is the same, but the second step is to select Amazon Web Services. You will be brought to a page with Resources on AWS on the right side. Make sure you are looking at the resources for OISST or whatever your target data is. Here they list the Amazon Resource Name, the region the data is in and the URL for the s3 bucket which is like a big folder on AWS that holds all the data. You use this for AWS command line interface access so in the terminal you can load in the data (filter by date for example if you want). Another nice feature is the “Browse Bucket” link at the bottom, which you can click to see how the bucket is organized and see the naming structure of the files especially if you only want some of the data. You can also download the files directly from this page as well.

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Accessing OISST Data

https://www.noaa.gov/information-technology/open-data-dissemination

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Visualize the Data

University of Maryland Climate Reanalyzer

https://climatereanalyzer.org/

Uses OISST
Under “Climate Charts,” select “Daily Sea Surface Temperature”
Time series and maps
Options: region, SSTs or anomalies, date

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Now that we’ve looked at where to access the data, what are some ways to visualize it? Well you can create your own maps, time series, plots once you’ve downloaded the data. These are two examples of some of the figures you can generate but the options are endless. These two examples were pulled from the University of Maryland Climate Reanalyzer. If you are not yet ready to start generating figures on your own, this site uses OISST to generate figures easily accessible by the public. So there are many ways to access and incorporate NODD data and projects that NCICS is part of.

If you go to the link, under “Climate Charts” select “Daily Sea Surface Temperature.” From here you can look at time series and map of a specific region. Shown above is the GOM with raw SST on the left and the anomalies on the right which are especially important to see how much warmer or cooler we are from the climatological mean. You can change whether you are looking at SSTs or anomalies, you can change the region, and you can specify the date you want to examine or the compare one year to others or to the climatology.

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NOAA Data Resources

Climate at a Glance

NOAA Data in the Classroom

NOAA Weather and Climate Toolkit

NCICS Resources

Data in the Classroom | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

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Thank you so much for attending!

Any questions?

ccardon@ncsu.edu

akielbasa@ncsu.edu

engagement@ncics.org

outreach@ncics.org