NASA Earthdata Cloud Data Access Guide

The NASA Earthdata Cloud is the NASA cloud-based archive of Earth observations. It is hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The NSIDC DAAC is in the process of transferring data products to the Earthdata Cloud. For a list of NSIDC DAAC data products that are currently available in the cloud, see NSIDC DAAC Cloud Collection page.

Key things to know

• Downloading data from the Earthdata Cloud to your local computer or storage system is and will continue to be free for users. For further general information on the Earthdata Cloud please see FAQs about NSIDC DAACs Earthdata Cloud migration.
• The NASA Earthdata Cloud Cookbook provides tutorials for finding data in Earthdata Search, Python and R.
• This guide will be updated with more information over time, as more tools to access data in the cloud become available.

Download to a local computer from Earthdata Cloud

Data archived through the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) can be downloaded to your local computer from the NASA Earthdata Cloud using the HTTPS file system. The HTTPS file system can be accessed in a web browser and supports single click download, but users needing a larger number of files have a few programmatic options to download files.

The NASA Earthdata Cloud Cookbook is the most comprehensive resource for data access options from the Earthdata Cloud. Resources for downloading data from the cloud are highlighted here with links to the cookbook for more detailed information.

earthaccess

The earthaccess Python library provides an easy way to search, download, or stream NASA Earth science data using a few lines of code. 

Information on using earthaccess to download data to a local computer is provided in the Earthdata Cloud Cookbook at https://nasa-openscapes.github.io/earthdata-cloud-cookbook/how-tos/access-data/access-local-python.html

Wget and cURL

Users familiar with downloading data using WGET or cURL can continue to use these command line tools to download data in Earthdata Cloud. Instructions and examples are provided in the Earthdata Cloud Cookbook at https://nasa-openscapes.github.io/earthdata-cloud-cookbook/how-tos/access-data/access-command-line.html

Direct Cloud access (S3) to NSIDC DAAC data

What is S3?

S3 is Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service.  The data are stored in Amazon S3 buckets in the Earthdata Cloud. S3 buckets are similar to file folders; they store objects which consist of data and its descriptive metadata. 

Prerequisites for direct access from the NASA Earthdata Cloud

The following three steps are required to access NSIDC DAAC data stored in Earthdata Cloud S3 buckets:

1. An AWS account. You can find more details on how to set one up here.
2. An EC2 instance set up in your AWS account. This article outlines how to set one up.
3. A free Earthdata Login account to access the data. If you don't have one, you can register for one here.

Access with Python

NSIDC DAAC provides a Python notebook demonstrating access to ICESat-2 data in the NASA Earthdata Cloud at https://github.com/nsidc/NSIDC-Data-Tutorials/tree/main/notebooks/ICESat-2_Cloud_Access.

Another example using Python to directly access data in the cloud is provided in the NASA Earthdata Cloud cookbook at https://nasa-openscapes.github.io/earthdata-cloud-cookbook/how-tos/find-data/earthdata_search.html.

Resources

General Information about the Earthdata Cloud: Earthdata Cloud Cookbook - Cheatsheets, Guides and Slides

Tutorials for working with NASA DAAC data in the cloud, including tutorials on using the CMR API and direct S3 access: Earthdata Cloud Cookbook - Tutorials