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The Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS) is an electronic library of NOAA environmental data. This web site provides capabilities for finding and obtaining those data.

CLASS is NOAA's premier on-line facility for the distribution of NOAA and US Department of Defense (DoD) Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) data, NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) data, and derived data.

NEWS:

  • Jason-2 Data: CLASS is now receiving Jason-2 data. Jason-2 was successfully launched on June 20 from Vandenburg AFB, CA. For details of the launch news go to the OSTM/Jason-2 web site. Jason-2's purpose is to monitor the rate of sea-level rise and help measure the strength of hurricanes. Researchers will use data from the Jason-2/Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM) to extend a 15-year record from two earlier altimeter missions that currently show sea level is rising at a rate of 3.2 mm/year - nearly twice as fast as the previous 100 years. For more information please go to the OSTM web site.

  • Jason-2 Restricted Data: Some Jason-2 data is restricted to authorized users during the initial phase of the mission, while other data is permanently restricted. Please reference the CLASS product pull-down menu to see which of the data families is restricted.

  • Attention MetOp Data Users! If you are currently receiving full orbital data files from CLASS, the following potential action from the data provider may impact your operations. Sometime in the future CLASS may begin receiving two files per orbit instead of one file per orbit. Each file will contain data for half an orbit. There is no plan to seam the files into one orbit file. Please contact the CLASS Help Desk if this potential change would adversely impact your operation or your research.

  • New DMSP Data: NOAA's National Climatic Data Center is now transferring DMSP SSMI-SSMIS TDR and SDR data in NetCDF format to CLASS along with embedded quality flags to identify climatology anomalies and errors in geolocation, temperature and time values. Also, the period of record is now extended back to August 1993. These data will become available to users in late July. CLASS will continue to offer the native format SSMI TDR and SDR, which started in February 1997.

  • SBUV Data: On Monday, June 2, 2008, a switch was made to ingest the SBUV Product Master Files on a daily basis. The monthly TAR files are no longer ingested by CLASS. However, the SBUV/2 level 1b files will continue to be archived on a monthly schedule. Also, CLASS is replacing the historical monthly files with daily files from 1985 forward.