Interface specifications

Terms

RFC2119

The terms MUST, MUST NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, MAY, and OPTIONAL are defined by RFC2119.

Domain terminology

• Water year: An annual period that corresponds with regional precipitation patterns rather than the start and end of the calendar year. Each Super Region’s water year can be different (e.g. the Western US water year starts on October 1), and this info is passed by the supercomputer as metadata.

Technical components

• webapp: Because the webapp has a client and server component, avoid the confusing term “front-end”.
• webapp server or webapp back-end: The thing that provides web-friendly data to the front-end.
• webapp ingest: The thing that turns supercomputer data into web-friendly data for the webapp server. This component receives data over the interface specified by this document.
• supercomputer or supercomputer back-end: Where the original data is produced. This component sends data over the interface specified by this document.

User interface components

• Map: A raster visualization of a region (i.e. a land subdivision), including:
  • Shape of the region
  • A gridded data variable
  • A NoData mask (optional)
  • Snow Water Equivalent point data (optional)
• Plot: A line chart visualization of data about a region, including:
  • This water-year’s measurements of a plot data variable
  • Statistical measurements calculated from full climatology for the region (i.e. the historical data of the same sensor/platform/variable, calculated by the supercomputer):
    • Minimum
    • Maximum
    • Median
    • Interquartile range (the range between 25th percentile and 75th percentile)

Storage locations

• Incoming directory: Where external data providers push files. Notated as {incomingDir} in the spec, this directory is usually incoming/snow-surface-properties/, with the exception of SWE point data which goes to incoming/snow-water-equivalent/ directory instead.

  Note

  On NSIDC infrastructure there are separate incoming directories available for testing (i.e. integration, qa, staging) and production.

• Live directory: Where the ingest application writes files for the webapp to access. Notated as {liveDir} in the spec, this directory is usually live/snow-surface-properties/, with the exception of SWE point data which goes to live/snow-water-equivalent/ directory instead.

Specifications