NOAA National Operational Model Archive and Distribution System

In order to better understand and predict complex inter-related Earth systems, NOAA initiated the highly collaborative ?NOAA Operational Model Archive and Distribution System? (NOMADS). NOMADS leverages established and emerging data management technologies to access and integrate model and other data stored in geographically distributed archives in various formats. Developed by computer and research scientists, NOMADS enables the sharing and inter-comparing of model results and the comparing of model results with observations. NOMADS is being developed as ?A Unified Climate and Weather Archive@ so that users can make decisions about their specific needs on time scales from days (weather), to months (El Nino), to decades (global warming) and to foster collaborations within the geo-science communities (ocean, weather, and climate) to study multiple earth systems using collections of distributed data under a sustainable system architecture. NOMADS uses OPeNDAP, LAS, THREDDS, and GrAD