index.md

Data Access and Formats

There is a host of different ways to access NASA Earth observing data. This section provides a map to a selection of data access methods and user resources. At the hackweek, the focus is on accessing data from a cloud compute instance in AWS us-west-2. However, some of the access methods and tools can be used from a local machine as well.

The tutorials are organized as follows:

• Overview provides an introduction to data access tools and offers some guidance on the capabilities and applicability of the different tools.
• NSIDC DAAC and NASA Resources explores various resources for learning about and accessing ICESat-2, SnowEx, and other NASA Earthdata.
• Using NASA EarthData Search to Discover Cloud-Hosted Data describes how to use the Earthdata Search GUI search interface for NASA data. This is probably the simplest way to search for ICESat-2, SnowEx and other NASA data.
• Using earthaccess to Search for, Access and Download SnowEx Data in the Cloud presents a Python package to search for NASA datasets and granules, and to download those granules.
• Using earthaccess to Search for, Access and Open ICESat-2 Data in the Cloud presents a Python package to search for NASA datasets and granules, and to download those granules, or, if you are in AWS us-west-2 cloud compute instance, open data files directly from cloud storage.