The Unidata program and the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) have a long history of collaboration and cooperation to serve the needs of Unidata community members. Now, the SSEC Data Center, which provides access to and distribution of real-time and archive weather satellite data, is beginning a new program to make limited amounts of archive satellite data available to Unidata's academic community members at no cost.

The SSEC Data Center archive is one of the largest online geostationary satellite data archives in the world, including data from all GOES satellites from 1994 to present (operational and test datasets) and several international geostationary satellites since 1998.

How it Works

Any Unidata community member with a .edu e-mail address can request access to the archive dataset for non-commercial use. (Please read the community archive terms of use.) All data are accessible via the ADDE protocol using McIDAS-X, IDV, or McIDAS-V. (ADDE server: openarchive.ssec.wisc.edu — see "Info" links in the table below for details.) Registered users can access up to 5 GB per calendar month per user. Only archive satellite data (older than the previous calendar month) are available.

Click to enlarge.
A second image shows IDV data chooser settings for the archive.

To access these datasets, community members must register the IP address from which they will be accessing the data. (Registered IP addresses should be on campus.) Interested community members should visit the SSEC Data Center's Open Archive Registration Page to register their IP address. Once an IP address is registered, access to the archive's ADDE datasets is allowed without additional authentication. During Data Center operating hours (7:30am-11:00 pm Central Time, Monday through Friday), requests for registration are usually processed within two hours if no additional information is required; after hours or on weekends, requests are processed the next business day.

NOTE: IP addresses must be registered every month; IP addresses are automatically removed from the access list on the 1st of every month at 0 UTC.

The following information is required to register:

• Name
• Institution
• Software intended to be used (i.e. IDV, Unidata McIDAS-X, McIDAS-V)
• IP address of client
• Intended use of data
• Satellites/datasets of interest

Available Data

The following satellite datasets are available:

NOTE: The older GOES datasets — SMS-1, SMS-2, and GOES-1 through GOES-7 from 1978 to 1996 — will be available soon.

Support

Questions regarding data access will be handled by the SSEC Data Center (dc@ssec.wisc.edu). Questions regarding the use of Unidata McIDAS-X, IDV, or satellite data use will be redirected to Unidata Support.