Downloading Data

One of the main features of Satpy is its ability to read various satellite data formats. However, it currently only provides limited methods for downloading data from remote sources and these methods are limited to demo data for Pytroll examples. See the examples and the demo API documentation for details. Otherwise, Satpy assumes all data is available through the local system, either as a local directory or network mounted file systems. Certain readers that use xarray to open data files may be able to load files from remote systems by using OpenDAP or similar protocols.

As a user there are two options for getting access to data:

  1. Download data to your local machine.

  2. Connect to a remote system that already has access to data.

The most common case of a remote system having access to data is with a cloud computing service like Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Amazon Web Services (AWS). Another possible case is an organization having direct broadcast antennas where they receive data directly from the satellite or satellite mission organization (NOAA, NASA, EUMETSAT, etc). In these cases data is usually available as a mounted network file system and can be accessed like a normal local path (with the added latency of network communications).

Below are some data sources that provide data that can be read by Satpy. If you know of others please let us know by either creating a GitHub issue or pull request.

NOAA GOES on Amazon Web Services

In addition to the pages above, Brian Blaylock’s GOES-2-Go python package is useful for downloading GOES data to your local machine. Brian also prepared some instructions for using the rclone tool for downloading AWS data to a local machine. The instructions can be found here.

NOAA GOES on Google Cloud Platform

GOES-16

GOES-17

NOAA CLASS

NASA VIIRS Atmosphere SIPS

EUMETSAT Data Center