Frequently Asked Questions

NODD is a NOAA enterprise data dissemination service that provides NOAA’s high-quality environmental data on the cloud. NOAA data from a wide array of observing systems is made available through public-private partnerships with three cloud service providers (CSPs), including  Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure (Azure). These unique public-private partnerships  provide free public access to NOAA data. The NODD team works with each of the CSPs and internal subject matter experts to ensure that users of the data get their questions answered. 

The NODD team welcomes user questions and feedback, and can be reached at NODD@NOAA.GOV.

NODD is a NOAA enterprise data dissemination service that provides NOAA’s high-quality environmental data on the cloud. NOAA data from a wide array of observing systems is made available through public-private partnerships with three cloud service providers (CSPs), including  Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure (Azure). These unique public-private partnerships  provide free public access to NOAA data. The NODD team works with each of the CSPs and internal subject matter experts to ensure that users of the data get their questions answered. 

The NODD team welcomes user questions and feedback, and can be reached at NODD@NOAA.GOV.

The NODD program began in 2015 as a research to operations (R2O) experimental project called the Big Data Project (BDP). It was designed to explore a scalable approach for disseminating NOAA’s exponentially increasing observation, model, and research datasets to the public using commercial cloud services. A new dissemination approach was needed because exponential growth of the data presented obstacles to the effective public use of NOAA’s data, including increasing costs and bandwidth limitations. 

After a formal process, NOAA signed three year, non-competitive, Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) with five partners in April of 2015. These five partners included Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IBM, Microsoft Azure, and the Open Commons Consortium (OCC). The CRADA phase resulted in more than 150 datasets made available via the cloud. 

In 2019, NOAA began the formal process to operationalize the BDP and formally requested proposals from industry, which resulted in signed ten year contracts with AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft. This resulted in the Big Data Project becoming the Big Data Program with initial BDP operational capability beginning in October 2019. 

In 2021, the BDP became an operational enterprise service known as NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD) with a continued mission to provide the public with free and easy data access via the cloud. These unique contracts memorialize NODD’s public–private partnerships with the CSPs, democratizing access to NOAA’s data and broadening engagement with NOAA’s high-quality environmental data.

In 2022, the NODD team was asked to write about the origin of the program in a Chapter for “Big Data Analytics in Earth, Atmospheric, and Ocean Sciences, published by Wiley, and available now. To learn more, visit Wiley.com offsite link.

NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD) is supporting NOAA’s transition to the cloud by positioning targeted  datasets on three major cloud service provider  platforms. The CSP platforms provide users with access to high-performance computing, analytic, and storage services alongside the data, making data analytics faster and more efficient than ever, while also expanding public access to NOAA’s data. NOAA’s on premise systems have a long and well-established history of sharing their environmental data with private industry, the academic research community, and the general public. There are no current plans to change these existing offerings. Instead, NODD augments the on-premise systems by creating an additional option for user access to NOAA's open data resources.

NOAA collects a vast amount of environmental data from a variety of observing systems and stores it within the NOAA federal cybersecurity boundary. This is pictured here on the left. Follow the arrow to the right to see that NODD has a trusted Data Broker, the NOAA Cooperative Institute of Satellite Earth System Studies, or CISESS. CISESS retrieves the data from within NOAA’s federal cybersecurity boundary and transmits the data to the public cloud platforms of the three CSPs. On the far right, the workflow depicts how the three CSPs in turn provide the data to an exponential number of users. Users are able to access the data for free and can either download the data or open a CSP account and utilize the analytics tools available on the CSP’s platforms to perform innovative data analysis and decision making.

The NOAA Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies (CISESS) is a partner of NODD and is the trusted Data Broker between NOAA and the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). CISESS’s data and information technology experts play key roles in the transfer and certification of datasets, and their high-performance computing cluster serves as a critical gateway for delivering data to the cloud. NOAA delivers copies of data to CSPs for scalable public access in a “one-to-several-to-many'' data access model.  

The Data Broker performs key functions, including the monitoring of data flows from source to destination, resolving operational problems, supporting the development of program metrics, and helping to develop and implement approaches to ensure end-to-end data integrity. The Data Broker certifies select CSP holdings as authoritative NOAA data, and in many cases, backfills near-real-time cloud holdings with the complete period-of-record for select datasets from NOAA archives.

While NODD primarily disseminates NOAA’s data in their original state, and does not generate or convert the data into cloud-optimized formats, the program is always interested in understanding formats of interest to users. NODD as a program works closely with internal NOAA teams, community partners, and our CSP partners to understand interoperability needs from the data community and work with them to offer cloud-optimized data formats when available.

There are hundreds of datasets available on the cloud through NODD and the platforms of the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). NODD datasets are from across NOAA and include near real-time datasets and period of record for select datasets. Data types include satellite, radar, surface observations, model, and forecast data, covering environmental focus areas such as weather, atmospheric, climate, oceanographic, fisheries, and emergency response imagery. A list of datasets available through NODD can be found on our NODD Program Datasets page at noaa.gov/nodd/datasets.

Yes, the data provided on NODD is authoritative and trusted data from NOAA. The data that is hosted through the program is pulled directly from NOAA’s on-premise systems by a trusted Data Broker and is then hosted on the cloud for easier access. Please see the above description of the NODD architecture and the Data Broker role for additional details on how data is transferred from NOAA’s systems and made available to users.

NODD would greatly appreciate feedback from the public on data they would like to see added to the program. Data users can request specific datasets to be hosted by submitting a request to the NODD team at NODD@NOAA.GOV. When submitting the request, please include details such as the dataset name, timeframe of interest, variables of interest, and if you have a preferred cloud service provider platform. Additionally, if you are willing to share, please include details about your use case for the data as it helps the NODD team fulfill the request.

The NOAA datasets made available through NODD are free for all users to access with no use restrictions and do not require any registration to access. The data is fully open for public access and can be downloaded with no egress charges. However, the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) each offer analytic tools and compute services for users to analyze and work with the data on their cloud platforms. Please refer to each of the CSPs webpages for pricing information for these tools and services.

The NODD team recognizes and values that users may have questions about the data itself and the science behind the datasets. We welcome users to reach out to the team with any questions NODD@NOAA.GOV and the team can help connect users to the appropriate subject matter experts for their dataset of interest. 

The NODD team also regularly hosts Office Hours sessions in collaboration with NOAA subject matter experts and our cloud partners for users to have a chance to learn more about specific datasets and ask any questions they may have. To learn more about the Office Hours and to register for upcoming sessions, please visit the NODD website.

The NODD team recognizes and values that users may have questions about how to work with the data on the cloud service provider (CSP) platforms or how to work with specific tools offered by each CSP. We welcome users to reach out to the team with any questions NODD@NOAA.GOV and the team can help connect users to subject matter experts within the CSP of interest. 

The NODD team also regularly hosts Office Hours sessions in collaboration with NOAA subject matter experts and our cloud partners for users to have a chance to learn more about specific datasets and ask any questions they may have. To learn more about the Office Hours and to register for upcoming sessions, please visit the NODD website.

NODD hosts NOAA’s high-quality environmental data collected from a variety of observing systems and platforms, and from across NOAA’s mission areas that are represented by our Line Offices (LOs). The LOs providing data to NODD include the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Ocean Service (NOS), Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), National Weather Service (NWS), and National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS). To see the mission area of each LO please visit the NOAA Line Offices website. NODD works with each of NOAA’s LOs to host their datasets that are of highest interest to users. 

The NODD team also works closely with each Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and the users of their platforms to understand which datasets are of interest to them. The CSPs and data users can request specific datasets to be hosted on the cloud through the NODD program. 

If you are interested in seeing additional datasets made available, please contact the NODD team at NODD@NOAA.GOV.

NODD disseminates data 24x7, utilizes 24x7 monitoring and alerting, and provides 8x5 EST technical support. NODD provides 24x7 support by utilizing software to monitor data flows. Alerts are customized to notify NODD’s Data Broker Cloud Engineers if there are any data delivery issues.

The NODD team has worked with the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) to add links to the landing pages of the NOAA datasets offered where users can register for data alerts and updates via SNS, Pub/Sub, and Azure Event Notifications. Please refer to the CSP landing page to see if a dataset of interest has an event driven notification set up. You can navigate to the landing pages from the NODD Datasets Page.

NODD hosts NOAA’s environmental data on the cloud service provider (CSP) platforms for all levels of data users to access and for data users across all sectors, including public, private, non-profit, and academia. The NODD team welcomes feedback and engagement with users of the data through NODD@NOAA.GOV to learn more about your experience with NOAA datasets available through NODD. 

The NODD team regularly hosts engagement activities for users to learn more about the datasets made available through the program. To learn more about all engagement activities and to register for any upcoming sessions, please visit the NODD website