Introduction

The Live Access Server is one of many services provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for gaining access to its enormous repositories of atmospheric and astronomical data. The Live Access Server1 provides access to atmospheric data from NASA’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites, data that consist of coarsely gridded measurements of major atmospheric variables, such as ozone, cloud cover, pressure, and temperature. NASA provides a web site that allows researchers to select variables of interest, and geographic and temporal ranges, and then to download or view the relevant data (see Figure 1.1). Using this service, we can attempt to answer questions about atmospheric and weather conditions in different parts of the world.