UTLS Ozone - Instructions to Data Providers

• Preliminaries
  
  To upload your data files on the BADC computer, you will need
  1. to have registered as a BADC user and got a password — if you are not a BADC registered user, please register here; if you are a BADC registered user but have forgotten your user ID and/or password, please ask help from the BADC support desk at badc@rl.ac.uk;
  2. to have been granted access to the UTLS Ozone archive — if you do not yet have access to the UTLS Ozone archive, please apply here.
  
  
• File format and file names
  
  

  The BADC is encouraging all UTLS Ozone projects and campaigns to deliver data in either NetCDF (binary) or NASA Ames (ASCII) format. To ensure the future usability of the data, it is important to include all necessary information about the data with the file. This is termed metadata. The data files submitted should conform to the Climate and Forecasts (CF) Metadata Convention. If you wish to check that files are correctly formatted before uploading them please use the NetCDF format checker or NASA-Ames format checker.

  Advice on standardising filenames is provided on the file-naming convention page along with a list of common names used for instruments, locations etc. in filenames. For data files from instruments operating on the FAAM aircraft, there are extra filename fields, see the FAAM filenaming convention page.

  Many data files contain the variable time which can be expressed in several ways. Guidelines on the recommended format of the time-variable header lines, units and the data values in Nasa-Ames files are available and are based on the format used in NetCDF.

  
  

• Uploading data
  
  Data providers can upload their data files directly from their home computer into the BADC /incoming/utls/ directory, via the Web based UTLS Ozone file uploader. This device can also be used to submit software and text files containing metadata or any relevant information on the project deliverables. Please have your BADC user ID and password handy. You will be asked to select the subdirectory corresponding to your project.

  Alternatively, if you have a large number of files to upload, you can do so by ftp, using your BADC userID and password. The BADC ftp server address is ftp.badc.rl.ac.uk (go to /incoming/utls/ and look for the appropriate subdirectory).

  
  
  

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