Tools and Tutorials

E-learning tutorials

Tools for generating EBAS Nasa Ames files

Text Editor

The least sophisticated way to generate an EBAS Nasa Ames file for submitting data to EBAS is to open a an example file in a text editor and change it to your needs. This example file can either be a similar file downloaded from EBAS (or last year’s submission) or the official template file from the EBAS Data Submission Manual).

You will have to

change all metadata in the file header
add the time series (sample start and end times as well as measurement data)

There are some challenges using this approach:

The file header contains some inter-dependencies which can easily become inconsistent when edited manually
Encoding sample start and end times as well as measurement data (especially missing values) is not easily done manually

However, this method can still be the easiest when submitting simple datasets for a very limited amount of instruments).

EBAS I/O Python Module

Especially for setting up an operational environment for either submitting data for many instruments in parallel or submitting data very often (e.g. near realtime), it is crucial to generate EBAS Nasa Ames files automatically by using dedicated software.

ebas-io is a python module for reading and writing EBAS Nasa Ames files and can help setting up such data production software.

The ebas-io repository provides the python module for download. The repository includes documentation and some example scripts for generating files for different instrument types.

The idea is that data providers can easily produce software to upload their data operational.