ORCAS Data Submission Guidelines

The ORCAS home page contains relevant links to project and data documentation, distributed data access, and other collaborating projects' data sets.

An initial master list of all ORCAS data sets (with links) will be compiled to provide easy access to all ORCAS data sets (both operational and research). Data sets are grouped by platform and sorted by data type (i.e., aerosol, cloud properties, radar, satellite, etc.). This list will be updated frequently. It is available directly at ORCAS Master List.

If you collected data for ORCAS, please review this list to verify that your data set(s) are properly named with the appropriate Principal Investigators (PIs) identified. Please e-mail any corrections, additions, or deletions directly to the EOL archive team. If you already have your data sets available on-line, please provide the web link or FTP access information. Once your data set (with metadata) is available, a link will be provided from the master list web page along with a submission date to track future data set upgrades or revisions (if needed).

Please submit your data set(s) (including accompanying metadata or documentation files) to the ORCAS Long-term Data Archive at NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory. Data set (and metadata) documentation guidelines are available by direct link at: Data Set Documentation ("Readme") Guidelines.



To expedite matters, EOL has established a password protected FTP capability to accept your ORCAS data set(s). The Internet address is:



    FTP:   data.eol.ucar.edu

    Login:    orcas    (contact EOL staff for the pwd)



It is very important to send an e-mail to eol-archive at ucar.edu indicating that the data file(s) have been FTPed, along with the file(s) names, data contact information, any data restrictions, and appropriate file documentation (i.e., authorship information including corresponding author(s), data formats, descriptions, acknowledgments, and metadata). Documentation files may be e-mailed to eol-archive at ucar.edu directly if preferred.

For very large data sets (approximately 1TB or larger), please mail your data on USB drive to the address below. 

All ORCAS data sets are password protected *by default, no request needed* until the public release date (March 1, 2017).  There is a project-specific "user ID" and "password." If you require additional security, please contact the EOL archive group to request a unique "user ID" and "password" for your data. For users without direct Internet access, or if your data set(s) are too large to FTP, you may send digital file(s) on magnetic or optical media (with documentation) by conventional mail to the EOL shipping address below.



Thank you very much for your assistance in providing final data to the ORCAS archive. Feel free to contact us should you encounter any problems or have any questions.



The ORCAS Data Management Team


EOL Archives

NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL)

Internet: eol-archive at ucar.edu



Mailing address:

P.O. Box 3000

Boulder, Colorado, USA 80307



Shipping Address:

3090 Center Green Drive

Boulder, Colorado, USA 80301