NASA Earthdata Cloud Cookbook

Supporting NASA Earth Science Research Teams’ Migration to the Cloud

Author

NASA Openscapes Team

Published

April 8, 2025

Welcome

Welcome to the NASA Openscapes Earthdata Cloud Cookbook!

This Cookbook is learning-oriented to support scientific researchers who use NASA Earthdata as NASA migrates data and workflows to the cloud. It has resources to learn how to work with NASA Earthdata in the cloud, as well as documentation for how to contribute to these resources. It is under active, open development.

Tip: use the earthaccess Python library to access NASA Earthdata. earthaccess is a Python library that streamlines access to NASA Earthdata locally or in the cloud. To learn more, see this tech spotlight, the NASA Earthdata blog post, and these how-to’s and tutorials.

Looking for R and MATLAB help? See the earthdatalogin R package, and tutorials for R and MATLAB in this cookbook.

The Cloud Paradigm

NASA Earthdata is available from Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) that are in the process of moving data holdings to a cloud platform. In the new paradigm, data storage (orange in the illustration) will migrate to the cloud (green) and DAAC-provided tools and services built on top of the data are co-located in the Earthdata Cloud.

As this data migration occurs, DAACs will have more information about how users can access data. For example, the Cloud Data page at PO.DAAC offers access to resources to help guide data users in discovering, accessing, and utilizing cloud data. During this transition, some data will continue to be available from the traditional on premise archive, while some data will also be available from and within the Earthdata Cloud.

Learn More About NASA’s Earthdata Cloud Migration

NASA EarthData Cloud Evolution - Starting point for understanding the background for moving to the Cloud.
How We Work - Nice overview of EOSDIS work and emphasis on open science by Katie Baynes, Keynote at FedGeoDay2020 (video).
Cloud Data Egress: How EOSDIS Supports User Needs - Describes supporting users’ needs during cloud migration by providing analysis-ready data by Emily Cassidy (blog).

About

This Earthdata Cloud Cookbook is being developed as a cross-DAAC collaboration by the NASA-Openscapes Team. Learn more at nasa-openscapes.github.io.

Citation

Please cite the NASA Earthdata Cloud Cookbook through the project’s Zenodo archive using DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7786710. This DOI represents all versions, and will always resolve to the latest one.

The citation will look something like:

Andy Barrett, Chris Battisto, Brandon Bottomley, Aaron Friesz, Alexis Hunzinger, Mahsa Jami, Alex Lewandowski, Bri Lind, Luis López, Jack McNelis, Cassie Nickles, Catalina Oaida Taglialatela, Celia Ou, Brianna Pagán, Sargent Shriver, Amy Steiker, Michele Thornton, Makhan Virdi, Jessica Nicole Welch, Jess Welch, Erin Robinson, Julia Stewart Lowndes. (2023). NASA-Openscapes/earthdata-cloud-cookbook: NASA EarthData Cloud Cookbook v2023.03.0 (v2023.03.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7786711

Please visit the Cookbook’s DOI link to get the most recent version - the one above is not automatically generated and may be out of date as we release updated versions of the Cookbook.

License

Openscapes makes all of their materials publicly available under open source licenses.

Our License is adapted from The Turing Way