Unidata provides data, tools, and community support for the geosciences. It facilitates access to real-time data through its Internet Data Distribution system and Thematic Real-time Environmental Data Distribution Services. Unidata develops open-source tools for data analysis and visualization like the Integrated Data Viewer and supports standards like netCDF. It also offers training opportunities, workshops, and internships to build the earth sciences community.

1. Unidata:
Providing data, developing tools, and
building community for the geosciences
Joshua Young
Community Services Manager
March 2015

2. Unidata: Community Driven
• Unidata means the entire community
• Unidata Program Center (UPC) means the staff in
Boulder
• UPC is governed by two committees composed of academic
community members ( with ex officio participation from government
partners, etc).
• The Users Committee advises on our services for the community
• The Strategic Advisory Committee advises on the management of
the UPC
• There are many opportunities for community
involvement!

3. Unidata: Services
• Facilitate access to (real-time) data by the University
research and education community
• Support the community in their use of the data
• Help advocate on behalf of the community
• Develop open source tools and infrastructure for data
access, analysis, visualization, and data management
• Advance metadata standards for the earth science
community
• Support for users of our services at
support@unidata.ucar.edu

4. Internet Data Distribution (IDD): Real-Time Data
Distribution
The “Push” Model
Over 200 sites. Approx 15 GB/hour
Unidata’s LDM
• Protocol and client/server software
• Event-driven data distribution
• Supports subscription to subsets of data feeds
Unidata: The Products

5. The IDD and LDM Data:
• Forecast Model Outputs from NCEP,
FNMOC, CMC
• Satellite data from GOES East & West; and
COSMIC
• RADAR Level II, III, & National Mosaics
• Lightening data
• Aircraft-borne Observation Data
• SuomiNet
• Textual Weather Bulletin Data

6. Thematic Real-time Environmental Data
Distribution Services (THREDDS)
•THREDDS is middleware to bridge the gap
between data providers and data users.
•The goal is to simplify the discovery and
use of scientific data and to allow scientific
publications and educational materials to
reference scientific data.
•The THREDDS effort consists of two main
areas: the THREDDS Data Server (TDS)
and the Common Data Model (CDM) /
netCDF-Java library.

7. Unidata’s TDS’

8. Visualizing and Analyzing Data
The Integrated Data Viewer (IDV)
Developed and supported at the UPC

9. AWIPS II

10. How Does AWIPS II Work?

11. Visualizing and Analyzing Data
GEMPAK McIDAS-X
Visualization tools supported by the
UPC but developed elsewhere

12. Network Common Data Form
(netCDF)
• A set of software libraries and machine-
independent data formats that support the
creation, access, and sharing of array-oriented
scientific data.
• Data in netCDF format is:
• ™Self-Describing
• ™Portable
• ™Scalable
• ™Appendable
• ™Sharable
• ™Archivable

13. Rosetta
Rosetta is a web-based service that provides an easy, wizard-
based interface for data collectors to transform their
datalogger generated ASCII output into:
• Climate and Forecast (CF) compliant netCDF files,
• Complete with metadata describing what data are
contained in the file
• Instruments used to collect the data
The use of CF compliant netCDF files allows the use of
standard services; however, with knowing that the
observational community appreciates the ease of use of
ASCII files, methods for transforming the netCDF back into
a user defined CSV or spreadsheet format are also built-in.

14. RAMADDA
The Repository for Archiving, Managing and Accessing Diverse Data
(RAMADDA), was originally developed at the Unidata Program Center and
is now an Open Source project managed by Geode Systems, LLC.
RAMADDA is a full-featured scientific data management system, allowing
you to:
• store virtually any type of scientific data
• manage access to and sharing of the data
• generate quick visualizations of many data types
Unidata continues to be actively involved with the RAMADDA community in
numerous ways:
• RAMADDA is tightly integrated with the IDV
• Unidata's Teaching Resources project relies on RAMADDA
• Unidata's Motherlode RAMADDA server makes a wide selection of
observational data and forecast model output available

15. Teaching Resources Network
The Teaching Resources Network allows educators to
create, access, and share collections of resource
material related to atmospheric, oceanic, and other earth
system phenomena.
It is designed for sharing scientific data and products,
teaching tools such as lesson plans and guided
exercises, and tools for displaying data.
To access the Teaching Resources Network visit:
• http://motherlode.ucar.edu/repository/alias/TeachingRe
sourceNetwork

16. Unidata: Community Opportunities
• Annual Training from July 20th to August 5th covering
Unidata tech and Python, TDS, LDM, AWIPS II, and IDV
with RAMADDA
• Unidata Users Workshop June 22nd to 25th
• Nominations for the DeSouza Award and committee
memberships
• Summer internships
• Equipment awards

17. Unidata: The Future
The Challenges/Opportunties:
• Exponential growth in data
• Decreasing community capacity for
hardware and system administration
Some of our Responses:
• Move to the Cloud
• Leverage the community support for
Python

18. Unidata: The Contacts
The UPC:
• http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
• support@unidata.ucar.edu
• @unidata
• www.facebook.com/Unidata Support
Me:
• jwyoung@ucar.edu
• @unidata_josh
• www.slideshare.net/JoshYoung8
• 303-497-8646

19. Unidata is one of the University Corporation
for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)'s
Community Programs (UCP), and is
funded primarily by the National Science
Foundation (Grant NSF-1344155).

20. Back-up Slides

21. NCEP Model Data Description

22. FNMOC Model Data Description

23. CMC Model Data Description

24. COSMIC Satellite Date Description

25. GOES Satellite Data
Description

26. Level II RADAR Data Description

27. Level III RADAR Data Description

28. National Mosaics RADAR Data
Description

29. Lightening Data

30. Aircraft-Borne Observation Data
(ACARS)

31. GPS Meteorological Data
(SuomiNet)

32. Textual Weather Bulletin Data