NOAA's National Coastal Data Development Center (NCDDC) achieves true end-to-end data management by offering access to the data within NOAA's Archive Centers to provide long-term archive, access, stewardship, and assessments of observation data to a diversified group of users worldwide. By supporting atmospheric, oceanographic, and physical sciences, NOAA’s National Data Centers (NNDCs) are able to facilitate sustained economic growth, scientifically sound environmental management, and public safety to the Nation and the international community through the support of environmental data, information, and products.

The data archive process for long-term access requires metadata. NCDDC provides coastal data resources (organizations and individuals) with a tool to develop, validate, manage, and publish metadata records via secure internet access. The Metadata Enterprise Resource Management Aid (MERMAid) allows users/data providers to export metadata records in various formats, such as FGDC XML and MARC XML to meet Data Center archival process requirements. Each NOAA Data Center specializes in the archive of particular data types.

National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC)

Global oceanographic data, products and information. Specializes in Oceanographic Raw Data & Products. Submit Data

National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)

The world’s largest archive of climate data past and present. Specializes in Climatological Raw Data & Products.

National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC)

Geophysical and environmental data from the sun’s surface to the earth’s core. Specializes in Geophysical Raw Data & Products.

NOAA Central Library (NCL)

The NOAA Central Library is not a Data Center but the library does specialize in the archival of Multimedia Records & Products.

Success Stories

NCDDC supports a service for the West Coast Observing System (WCOS)  by providing end-to-end data management services in the form of the WCOS-NODC Conduit.

The WCOS-NODC Conduit is a Java application developed at NCDDC to access the WCOS data and metadata, to transform the WCOS data to IOOS standards, to transform the metadata from EML to FGDC, to package the transformed data and metadata into ZIP files, and to serve the files for NODC for retrieval and and archive for perpetuity.