CEDA Archive Web Download Service

This service allows you to access the data held in the CEDA Archive:

• Browse the archive directory structure
• Log into CEDA for access to restricted datasets
• Download single and multiple files
• View and subset NetCDF file contents

Additionally, the  OPeNDAP technology underpinning this service allows additional functionality such as accessing file contents directly via the internet from within data processing scripts written within Python, Matlab IDL and other scripting languages. 

Viewing and downloading individual files

• Text files - You may find that some text based files will automatically open in your web browser when selected. You can then download these files by using the Save as... facility on your browser (usually found under the File drop-down menu). Others will start to download directly.
• Binary and Compressed files - these should automatically start to download to your computer. WinZip on Windows or gzip and tar utilities on Linux machine may be needed to unpack the contents.

Download multiple files

When browsing the archive using https://data.ceda.ac.uk, click on the Bulk download button to see the options for bulk download:

The wget tool provides a convenient way for bulk downloading data. However, for data that either has restricted access, or requires you to have a CEDA account for access, you will need to obtain an Archive access token. You can use this token to authenticate yourself when using a wget command to download data. See Using Archive Access Tokens for details of how to obtain and use a token. Note that you will need a CEDA account in order to create a token and, if the data you wish to download has restricted access, you must have applied for and been granted access to the data from your CEDA account.

Scripted Interaction with archive via OPeNDAP

OPeNDAP stands for "Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol", and is a data transport architecture and protocol widely used by earth scientists. There are a variety of libraries available to interact with OPeNDAP services. The following are a few example sites detailing libraries for common languages used within the CEDA data community.

Our OpenDAP interface is located here:  http://dap.ceda.ac.uk/thredds/fileServer/

Whist some of these tools may work for public datasets held in the CEDA Archives, users wishing to use data available to registered CEDA users will need to follow additional steps to use security certificates as detailed on the CEDA OPeNDAP:  Scripted interactions help page.