Accessing Open-Access Atmospheric Data

The previous lecture showed how to access open-access ocean data. This final video of the week, with Ebenezer Nyadjro, does the same for the other half of the picture: the atmospheric data that drives ocean forecasts – where to find it, how to read it, and why free access matters, especially for Africa.

The lecture covers:

• Why meteorological data is needed – the atmosphere drives the ocean through momentum (winds), heat (latent, sensible, and radiative fluxes), and freshwater (evaporation and precipitation). Together these fluxes drive ocean currents, temperature, salinity, stratification, sea level, and waves – so without realistic atmospheric forcing, an ocean forecast is incomplete
• How atmospheric data drive ocean forecasting – numerical weather prediction (NWP) systems need data to run, and their outputs are used through bulk parameterizations to compute the surface momentum, heat, and freshwater fluxes that set the ocean model’s upper boundary conditions
• Why open-access data matters – open data is freely available to everyone, but it must also be good enough – complete, well-documented, and understandable to the end user
• Why high-resolution data matters – finer atmospheric data better resolves coastal winds and local features that shape coastal ocean dynamics
• Where to get atmospheric data – the major providers, including ECMWF / ERA5, NOAA’s GFS and NOMADS, the Copernicus Climate Data Store, EUMETSAT, and the UK Met Office
• Understanding and reading metadata – how to check a dataset’s variables, units, coordinates, resolution, temporal coverage, and update frequency before using it – and why skipping this step leads to mistakes
• National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) – the vital role of national agencies in providing and stewarding data
• Why open-access data matters for Africa – free, global atmospheric data lets African researchers, students, and agencies access the same forcing datasets used worldwide, supporting local forecasting where observing networks and budgets are limited

The takeaway that closes the week: the atmosphere drives the ocean, so accessing good atmospheric data is as essential as accessing ocean data – and the same skills apply. Know your providers, read the metadata, and the world’s open-access atmospheric datasets are yours to use. You now have the full picture of the upstream data ecosystem, from observations and providers to hands-on access.