(ISD) Integrated surface database data

[sckott]

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/isd/index.php

[brian-may]

ISD is available in a "legacy" service.

http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/rest/

[sckott]

@brian-may Thanks. Do you know if legacy means don't use it, or that it just doesn't get updates/fixes to code base, etc.

[brian-may]

There is a replacement planned, but no timeline. Until then no updates/fixes.

[sckott]

Ok, thanks

[sckott]

@brian-may What is the difference between data available via this REST API http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/webservices/v2 and the ISD data?

[brian-may]

The ISD dataset is made up of sub-hourly(5min, 15min), hourly, and synoptic (3hr, 6hr, 9hr) observations. The ISD dataset will eventually be made available in the CDO v2 API, but there is no timeline for when that will happen. Currently, only the precipitation datasets in the CDO v2 API provide subdaily data.

[sckott]

Okay, thanks @brian-may . That's great ISD data will eventually be in the CDO v2 API - it's a nice API

[sckott]

@brian-may I don't see any documentation for rate limits for this API. It seems as though it may be one call every 60 seconds. True? If true, any chance of making this something more useable, like 10 seconds? or 3 seconds?

[sckott]

@brian-may Any idea what the headers are for the data given back by this legacy API? I can guess correctly at some of the fields, but not all

[brian-may]

I seem to recal that there is a rate limit on this endpoint, but I am not sure. I will look into the headers.

[sckott]

@brian-may thanks

[brian-may]

In the CSV output for ISD values the fields are: aws id, wban id, yyyymmdd, hhmm, variable id, element field 1, element field 2, element field 3, element field 4, element field 5, element field 6, element field 7, element field 8, element field 9, element field 10, element field 11, element field 12, element field 13, data source, report type.

Explanations of what these are can be found in the documentation: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/noaa/ish-format-document.pdf. The number of fields a variable will have is variable so many of them will be null. The meaning of these fields is also variable, and they are defined in the documentation.

[sckott]

thanks @brian-may ! Any idea who I could talk to about the 60 second rate limit for the legacy API?

[brian-may]

You can contact Rich.Baldwin@noaa.gov, but due to the deprecated status I doubt there will be any change made.

[sckott]

@brian-may thanks, emailed Rich.

[sckott]

closing, in favor of #76