Automating NOAA reanalysis data download

Question

Not sure if this question is on topic but I want to be able to automate the download of data from this site using a script- http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.pressure.html

Currently I can go here and manually download by clicking the variable that I want (such as surface pressure, time of day that I want the data , subset for the region and the pressure level(such as 500 hPa etc).

The same can be accomplished by harcoding the value of file that I want to download in a script. I want to automate this process with some intelligence using a script. I want to pass as input the following

a) type of variable that i want to download such as surface pressure or temperature

b) time i.e data corresponds to which day

c) latitude /longitude of the subset that I want to download

d) pressure level( 500 hPa, 850 hPa etc).

These four variables will be sent each time for each HTTP download request.

Is that possible ?

Answer 1

Here are the instructions to use the NOAA webservices API that provides access to current data - http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/webservices/v2 - according to their site:

This API is for developers looking to create their own scripts or programs that use the CDO database of weather and climate data. An access token is required to use the API, and each token will be limited to five requests per second and 1,000 requests per day.

Below is an illustration of the base url and end points.