Global Spatiotemporal Data: Exploring and Downloading Resources from NASA GES DISC

Cover image is the homepage of NASA Earthdata, captured on November 29, 2025.

The GES DISC (Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center) is one of NASA’s Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), located at the Goddard Space Flight Center. It is responsible for preserving Earth science–related data, such as atmospheric composition, precipitation, hydrology, temperature, and solar radiation, and making these datasets available to researchers, applied scientists, and the general public. GES DISC provides comprehensive services for data exploration, visualization, subsetting, online analysis, and programmatic access.

Data Search and Download

Based on NASA’s Open Science Policy, all GES DISC data and services are freely accessible to all users. Instructions for searching and downloading data can be found on the official website under Help Topics, which provides detailed guidance on dataset discovery and retrieval. Notably, although full datasets can be extremely large, GES DISC allows users to specify custom temporal ranges, spatial ranges, and selected variables, eliminating the need to download entire files.

It is important to note that NASA is currently consolidating all its resources under the Earthdata domain (https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/) in accordance with the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA). All datasets are expected to be migrated and fully integrated by the end of 2026. During the migration period, some features or datasets may be temporarily unavailable.

Example of Data Download

The following demonstrates how to download satellite data from NASA Earthdata, including account setup, authorization, dataset selection, and batch downloading using R.

Account and Authorization Setup

Before downloading any data, you must have a NASA Earthdata account.

First, go to NASA Earthdata and complete the registration and login process. If the site is inaccessible, you may use a VPN to change your IP address before registering your account.

Second, navigate to Applications → Authorized Apps → APPROVE MORE APPLICATIONS.

Third, select the datasets you wish to access and click Authorize on the right. Be sure to read and comply with the End User License Agreement (EULA). For example, here we authorize NASA GESDISC DATA ARCHIVE.

You can view all accepted EULAs under EULAs → Accepted EULAs.

Fourth, click Generate Token → Generate Token to create a token for data downloads. Note that you may hold at most two active tokens at the same time.

Fifth, click the copy button to save your newly generated token.

At this point, account setup and authorization are complete. VPN is no longer required for subsequent steps.

Data Filtering

First, search for the dataset you want to download on GES DISC.

Second, for the dataset you wish to download, click Subset/Get Data.

Third, choose a Download Method. If you want to download the entire dataset, select Get Original Files. If you want to specify a spatial region or variable subset, choose Get File Subsets using OPeNDAP or Get File Subsets using the GES DISC Subsetter.

In Method Options, configure the desired time range, spatial extent, and variables.

Under Output format, select the file format, such as netCDF.

Fourth, click Get Data in the bottom right to generate the list of files.

Fifth, once the site finishes processing all file links, click Download Links List* to download the text file containing the dataset URLs.

The downloaded text file contains all file links: the first line is a README PDF link (which you may delete or ignore during reading), and the rest are data links (e.g., .nc4 files).

Data Download

We can use the following R code to download the dataset.

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# Packages
library(readr)
library(httr)
library(terra)
library(stringr)

# Token
token <- "Previously generated token"

# Data links
txt_path <- "Text file containing previously downloaded dataset links.txt"
urls <- read_lines(txt_path)
urls <- urls[urls != ""]
cat("Found ", length(urls), " links.\n")

# Setup download directory
dl_dir = "Set download directory"
dir.create(dl_dir, showWarnings = FALSE)

# Timeout
timeout_sec <- 3600

# Progress bar
pb <- txtProgressBar(min = 0, max = length(urls), style = 3)

# Download data
for (i in seq_along(urls)) {
  ymd <- str_extract(urls[i], "(19|20)\\d+")
  file_name <- paste0(ymd, ".nc4")
  dest_path <- file.path(dl_dir, file_name)
  
  if (is.na(ymd)) {
    next
  }
  
  if (!file.exists(dest_path)) {
    cat("Downloading ", file_name, "\n")
    
    result <- tryCatch(
      {
        GET(
          urls[i],
          add_headers(Authorization = paste("Bearer", token)),
          write_disk(dest_path, overwrite = TRUE),
          timeout(timeout_sec)
        )
      },
      error = function(e) {
        cat("⚠️ Timeout or Error: ", file_name, "\n", "Error Message: ", conditionMessage(e), "\n")
        return(NULL)
      }
    )
    
    if (is.null(result)) next
    
    if (result$status_code == 200) {
      cat("✅ Success: ", file_name, "\n")
    } else {
      cat("⚠️ Failure: ", file_name, "(HTTP", result$status_code, ")\n")
    }
  } else {
    cat("⏭️ Already exists: ", file_name, "\n")
  }
}
close(pb)

# Results
downloaded <- list.files("data", pattern = "\\.nc4$", full.names = TRUE)
cat("Total downloads completed, ", length(downloaded), " files.\n")

Viewing the Download Results

After the download is complete, all .nc4 files will be located in the download directory you specified earlier.

Conclusion

NASA GES DISC is a comprehensive and versatile Earth science data center offering a wide range of high-quality datasets. Its data richness makes it well suited for temporal and spatial analysis, as well as for training neural networks. When using these datasets, be mindful of their licensing requirements and properly cite the data source, version, and access date.

See Also

• Downloading NASA Data

References

• Jundian. (October 24, 2025). Downloading NASA Data. Jundian’s Website. Retrieved November 29, 2025, from https://jundian.netlify.app/download-nasa-data/
• NASA. (November 27, 2025). GES DISC – Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center. EARTHDATA. Retrieved November 29, 2025, from https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/centers/gesdisc-daac
• NASA. (November 27, 2025). The Web Unification Project. EARTHDATA. Retrieved November 30, 2025, from https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/about/web-unification-project
• NASA. (June 9, 2025). Science Information Policy. NASA. Retrieved November 30, 2025, from https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/science-information-policy/
• GES DISC. (n.d.). Who We Are. GES DISC. Retrieved November 30, 2025, from https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/information/documents?title=Who%20We%20Are
• GES DISC. (n.d.). Migrating to the Cloud. GES DISC. Retrieved November 30, 2025, from https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/information/documents?title=Migrating%20to%20the%20Cloud
• GES DISC. (n.d.). Help Topics. GES DISC. Retrieved November 30, 2025, from https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/help#my-dashboard