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Once you have located a dataset of interest,
the next step is to follow the link to the introductory page for the relevant dataset where you will find the BADC's helpfiles - from the catalogue search results, click on the link to Dataset Web
Pages under the title of your chosen dataset (see Where is the data documentation help page for more details).
Most of the datasets held by the BADC are unrestricted and
freely available, either through the World Wide Web (WWW)
or the anonymous FTP interface.
If you are using the World Wide Web, a direct link on the introductory
page for the relevant dataset will take you to the data directories. Alternatively you may use
the Get Data Archive
Facility to retrieve the data.
When you have selected the file you want to retrieve, select
the "load to local disk" or "Save As" (or equivalent) option on
your browser and click on the file. You may also use the Web fetch facility to download multiple files.
If you want to transfer a large amount of data you will probably
want to use the FTP interface, using the anonymous login and your email address as password.
)Some of our datasets have access restrictions placed upon them. Users wishing to use these datasets must have a BADC username and password and have been granted access to the datasets they require. Please note that there are two steps involved:
Please read the User Registration and Data Application procedure for detailed information.
Many of our datasets have restrictions on who can have access the data and what they can do with it. In particular, please note that Met Office and ECMWF data are only available for bona fide academic research. Some datasets require you to electronically signd a conditions of use form before we can grant you access.
Once you have a username and have been granted access, you can use it to retrieve the restricted data over the Web, using the Get Data Archive Facility or for some specific datasets (e.g.ECMWF datasets) by FTP from ftp.badc.rl.ac.uk, the BADC file server.
Having transferred your data files, you will need to extract the data you want. When making data available at the BADC, we are constrained by the fact that our users work with a variety of different computer systems, and we therefore must provide data in a portable form. The way we do this depends on the size, complexity and origin of the dataset in question.
The two principal methods are :
Original Binaries - in some cases, where the structure
or the original binary file is simple (e.g. encoded integer*2),
we supply the original file with software to read it. Binary format is an efficient method of storing large data files, but they are not directly readable when in binary code. Appropriate software or a suitable programme will allow you to read/convert the binary code into a meaningful data file.
ASCII files - For
some smaller datasets (e.g. TOMS and CIRA), we keep the data in
ASCII and provide portable software to read it. ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a simple format that can be read directly from the file in the same way as a text (*.txt) file.
Note that some data files may have been compressed (compressed
ASCII format). To read these data files, you will need to use
a public domain decompression tool called GZip to produce an uncompressed ASCII file, and
then run software which we provide to convert the ASCII into
a local binary.
In each case we provide some simple example code to read the file which you can adapt to your own requirements. This code is stored in a gzipped tar (Unix archive) file. There is some help on using GZip and tar to get you started if you are not already familiar with them.
Finally, for each instrument there is a 3rd party software directory which contains external, user-written software. We encourage you to submit your own code to this directory if you think others might find it useful (contact the BADC Support). Please note that we cannot support this code - if you can't get it to work you should contact the author.
All users are automatically set up with a web account allowing for data download over the web, via the Get Data Archive Facility. However some users may wish to manipulate data on the BADC file server (e.g. ECMWF and UM data users). The BADC therefore offers the possibility for those users to get an account set up on our system via login.badc.rl.ac.uk. Connections tologin.badc.rl.ac.uk are via SSH clients. Please contact the BADC Support with your request for an account set up on this server. Please note that you will still have to ftp the data to your local area to process the files.
Another way to access some of the large numerical model datasets(such as ECMWF, HadCM3), is via the data extractor service ( http://cdat.badc.nerc.ac.uk/cgi-bin/dxui.py ). This allows users to subset, visualise and download the data of interested via a simple web browser interface. Data can be extracted in NetCDF format, suitable for further processing.
Data files may be submitted to the BADC for selected datasets using the web-based file uploader. You must have a BADC account and must have been granted access to the appropriate data archive to be populated.
For instructions on data provision, please read the Data, Software and Metadata provision page.
Data files providers should also check details of file format specifications (e.g. NASA Ames standards) before submitting files to the BADC.
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