Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/CDR FUNDAMENTAL
CDR FUNDAMENTAL·dataset

Cleaned-up raw satellite data for climate study (NOAA)

NOAA Fundamental Climate Data Records (FCDR)
atmosphere NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. The foundational sensor readings behind climate records, such as calibrated brightness and radiance measurements, carefully corrected and made consistent over time.

How it's made. Produced by NOAA by reprocessing decades of raw satellite sensor data to remove errors and keep instruments comparable across the years.

How & where you'd use it. Serves as the building-block input that other, higher-level climate datasets are made from; mainly for climate scientists rather than general readers.

What's measured

aws-pdsagricultureclimatemeteorologicalsustainabilityweather

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span— → ongoing

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

NOAA's Climate Data Records (CDRs) are robust, sustainable, and scientifically sound climate records that provide trustworthy information on how, where, and to what extent the land, oceans, atmosphere and ice sheets are changing. These datasets are thoroughly vetted time series measurements with the longevity, consistency, and continuity to assess and measure climate variability and change. NOAA CDRs are vetted using standards established by the National Research Council (NRC). Climate Data Records are created by merging data from surface, atmosphere, and space-based systems across decades. NOAA’s Climate Data Records provides authoritative and traceable long-term climate records. NOAA developed CDRs by applying modern data analysis methods to historical global satellite data. This process can clarify the underlying climate trends within the data and allows researchers and other users to identify economic and scientific value in these records. NCEI maintains and extends CDRs by applying the same methods to present-day and future satellite measurements. Fundamental CDRs are composed of sensor data (e.g. calibrated radiances, brightness temperatures) that have been improved and quality controlled over time, together with ancillary calibration data.

Get the data

noaa_access.py
# NOAA Open Data on AWS — public S3, no login
import s3fs

fs = s3fs.S3FileSystem(anon=True)
# find this dataset's bucket in the docs link in the sidebar, then:
# files = fs.ls("noaa-<bucket>/...")
# open NetCDF/GRIB with xarray, COGs with rioxarray
NOAA Open Data is on public AWS S3 — no login at all (anonymous access).