Nearly two decades of satellite images available in Nasa’s Worldview
This is great news for a project I&#x27;m currently working on: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17237445" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17237445</a>. I&#x27;ll be sure to look into this and see what&#x27;s new compared to what&#x27;s already out there. There is <i>a lot</i> of public satellite imagery.<p>That said, I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if this isn&#x27;t actually the first surfacing of this particular dataset. My experience is that most data of this kind (satellite, land station, oceanic&#x2F;marine, balloon, radar, etc...) is already available online. It&#x27;s unfortunately mired in a sea of complexity, filled with shifting departments, confusing acronyms, funding depletion and musical chairs.<p>Here is my favorite example. The NOAA works directly with NASA for much of this kind of data, and stewards it online here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncdc.noaa.gov&#x2F;data-access" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncdc.noaa.gov&#x2F;data-access</a>. Observe that the URL indicates the department is the NCDC (National Climatic Data Center). As it turns out, the website informs us that the NCDC no longer exists, and is now known as the NCEI (National Centers for Environmental Information).<p>But let&#x27;s put that detail aside. Now we go to the page listed for satellite datasets: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncdc.noaa.gov&#x2F;data-access&#x2F;satellite-data&#x2F;satellite-data-access-datasets" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncdc.noaa.gov&#x2F;data-access&#x2F;satellite-data&#x2F;satelli...</a>. Lots of acronyms - acronyms for everything! Let&#x27;s try the OISST (Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature) dataset: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncdc.noaa.gov&#x2F;sst&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncdc.noaa.gov&#x2F;sst&#x2F;</a>. Whoops, that 404s. It also doesn&#x27;t tell us what the acronym stands for. Fortunately we can find the canonical page by Googling for it.<p>Okay, let&#x27;s try another dataset back on that first page. How about the SSM&#x2F;I-SSMIS (Special Sensor Microwave&#x2F;Imager and Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncdc.noaa.gov&#x2F;ssmi" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncdc.noaa.gov&#x2F;ssmi</a>? Well, we&#x27;re told we have to go to <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.class.noaa.gov&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.class.noaa.gov&#x2F;</a> to get that data. Now the first thing we see on <i>that</i> page is an &quot;urgent notice&quot; that URLs are breaking, and anyone using the current ones (for e.g. FTP access) has to migrate to a slightly different URL with a choice of subdomains appended. Moving past that initial notice, if we actually try to find the SSMI dataset, we find out that it&#x27;s actually listed as the DMSP (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bou.class.noaa.gov&#x2F;saa&#x2F;products&#x2F;search?datatype_family=DMSP" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bou.class.noaa.gov&#x2F;saa&#x2F;products&#x2F;search?datatype_...</a>. Now to download this data, we&#x27;re presented with this wacky interface: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bou.class.noaa.gov&#x2F;saa&#x2F;products&#x2F;psearchDMSP" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bou.class.noaa.gov&#x2F;saa&#x2F;products&#x2F;psearchDMSP</a>.<p>This is basically why I decided to work on my current project to consolidate, document and organize all of this data in a public search engine. It feels like so much climate data is only public in the absolute minimum sense of the word, because trying to access it (or even make sense of all of it) transports me back to 2006. There&#x27;s a very real sense that the right hand doesn&#x27;t know what the left is doing here. Clearly these organizations are aware that accessing the data is difficult, and they must have good intentions by going through the effort to document it and host it in FTP servers. But there are so many conflicting names and acronyms for the &quot;stewards&quot; for overseeing this or that data, which redirect you to various &quot;portals&quot; for searching it, which tell you to add data to your &quot;cart&quot; to &quot;order&quot; in some sort of contrived interface. It&#x27;s maddening.<p>Well, there ends my rant for the day. If anyone has any good ideas for working on this, please feel free to get in touch.