From the surface of the sun to the depths of the ocean floor, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, works to keep citizens informed about the changing environment around them. Its vast network of radars, satellites, buoys, ships, aircraft, tide gauges, and supercomputers keeps tabs on the planet’s health and provides critical data used to predict changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coastlines. Quite simply, NOAA is the quintessential big data agency.

Each day, NOAA collects, analyzes, and generates more than 20 terabytes of data—twice the amount of data found in the Library of Congress’s entire printed collection. However, only a small percentage of NOAA’s data is easily accessible to the public.

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