APIs
Programmatic access to CCI data is available through the following methods.
OpenSearch
Access all data of the CCI Open Data Portal through OpenSearch, a suite of web-based search engine and search protocol standards. An OpenSearch description provides the web interface of the CCI Open Data Portal search engine -
https://archive.opensearch.ceda.ac.uk/opensearch/description.xml
THREDDS
A THREDDS web server provides access to data and metadata on the CCI Open Data Portal via the Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium and the Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OPeNDAP) standard.
https://data.cci.ceda.ac.uk/
Earth System Grid Federation
CCI Obs4MIPs datasets are available through the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF). These provide observational CCI products technically aligned with climate model data, specifically that made available from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). ESGF provide a RESTful API.
https://esgf.ceda.ac.uk/esg-search/search/?query=CCI
FedEO
The CEOS Federated EO Gateway (FedEO) Clearinghouse STAC index provides interoperable access, following ISO/OGC interface guidelines, to Earth Observation metadata. The FedEO service periodically ingests the latest CCI Open Data Portal catalogue of all CCI datasets.
ESA Data Discovery Portal
The ESA Data Discovery Portal crawls publicly available metadata of ESA datasets and indexes the metadata, providing a unified view of all ESA data holdings including in a machine-readable way so it can be processed by search engines that index structured data.https://data.esa.int/
Toolbox
The CCI Toolbox is a python package that provides access and operations to CCI data.
It is available on GitHub and can be installed with Conda.
Data Stores
The CCI Toolbox comes with two pre-configured data stores, built with the xcube Python package. The CCI Open Data Portal data store (esa-cdc) provides programmatic access to all CCI data. The Zarr data store (esa-cdc-zarr) provides access to selected CCI data in Zarr format for faster performance.
Datasets
Datasets are accessed through Data Stores. By providing a dataset identifier the CCI Toolbox loads only the metadata and structure of the dataset, with the full dataset loaded only when needed for operations. Opened datasets are represented through data structures defined by Python packages xarray, pandas, and geopandas.
Operations
The CCI Toolbox provides climate analyses operations geared to CCI data for coregistration, resampling, spatial and temporal subsetting, time series extraction, outlier detection, merging, normalising, spatial adjustment, temporal adjustment, and providing the means for operation registration. In addition, the Python packages xarray, pandas, and geopandas provide a rich and powerful low-level data processing interface for datasets opened through the CCI Toolbox. See the API reference for details.
Installation
Method 1 - Install Conda and then run the following
$ conda create --name ect --channel conda-forge esa-climate-toolbox
$ conda activate ect
Method 2 - Or, if you already have an existing Conda environment then just run the following with the environment activated
$ conda install --channel conda-forge esa-climate-toolbox
Method 3 - Install directly from the GitHub repository as follows
$ git clone https://github.com/esa-cci/esa-climate-toolbox.git
$ cd esa-climate-toolbox
$ conda env create
$ conda activate ect
$ pip install -e .
Getting Started
Try our Jupyter Notebooks on listing and searching CCI data, subsetting CCI data, accessing Zarr format CCI data, listing the operations of the CCI Toolbox, and general operations on CCI data.
Helpdesk
For support with the CCI Toolbox, please visit our Helpdesk.
Policy & Standards
CCI Data Policy
The CCI Data Policy ensures free and open access to CCI data. The policy is available here.
CCI Data Standards
The CCI Data Standards are community-driven requirements ensuring consistent essential climate variable (ECV) data production across the CCI programme. Version 2.3 is the latest. The requirements include data production conformance to the network Common Data Form (netCDF) format, the Climate and Forecasting (CF) metadata conventions, the Attribute Convention for Data Discovery (ACDD), and Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) compliant discovery metadata.
CCI Ontology
To ensure consistency where the same global attributes apply to all CCI essential climate variables (ECVs), and to avoid different terms being used for the same entity, relevant terms have been gathered in a CCI Ontology defining all CCI entities and the relationship between those entities, including CCI project, platform, sensor and institution. For example, the ontology defines common entities for the satellite platforms used across the CCI projects in their data production.
About
Established by ESA in 2008, the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) is a major science programme focused on developing global, decadal-long satellite-derived climate data records. Collectively, these data provide a major contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of the state of the climate and underpin the climate value information chain that inform effective policy, decision-making and action.
The CCI programme leverages a 40-year satellite data archive from ESA and its Member States, including current ESA missions, the Copernicus Sentinels, ESA third-party missions, and agency partners including NASA, NOAA, JAXA, and EUMETSAT. The CCI programme produces datasets for Essential Climate Variables (ECVs), critical for climate monitoring as defined by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) and required by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to systematically monitor the Earth system. Satellite observations form the backbone of GCOS, with two-thirds of the 55 ECVs primarily measured from space. As of January 2024, the CCI has contributed to records for 27 ECVs, marking a significant impact on understanding Earth's climate system.
CCI Open Data Portal
The CCI Open Data Portal is the data management facility of the CCI programme. It offers free, open and easy access to all CCI data via a user-friendly dashboard, a faceted search interface, OpenSearch, OPeNDAP, ESGF, WMS, WCS, HTTPS and FTP. The facility also forms part of the CEOS Federated Earth Observation Gateway (FedEO) and the ESA Data Discovery Portal.