ERDDAP at the APDRC
Easier access to scientific data

Atmospheric Variable Names

Convert a Common Oceanic/Atmospheric Variable Name to/from a Full Name

This web page lets you convert a common oceanic/atmospheric variable name to/from a full name.
For example, the variable name "sst" converts to the full name "Sea Surface Temperature".

To work correctly, this web page requires that JavaScript be enabled in your browser. Please:
1) Enable JavaScript in your browser:
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2) Reload this web page.

Convert from to a variable name.

Reset the form to the default values.

Or, bypass this web page and do oceanic/atmospheric variable name conversions from within a computer program, script, or web page.

Or, view/download the entire oceanic/atmospheric variable names list in these file types: .csv, .htmlTable, .itx, .json, .jsonlCSV, .jsonlKVP, .mat, .nc, .nccsv, .tsv, or .xhtml.

Notes

DISCLAIMER OF LIABILITY - No person or organization associated with this web site makes any warranty, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness, of any information at this web site.
Exact Match - This service requires case-sensitive, exact matches. If there is no exact match, you will get an error error message. All of the variable names are all lower case.
Not Perfect - This service is far from perfect. Most variable names could be expanded to a large number of different full names. This service includes some commonly used variable names that fairly reliably (> 60% confidence?) expand to a particular name (ignoring minor variations), but that doesn't mean the service will be correct for your use of the variable name. The service only includes the most common full name related to a given variable name (e.g., SST expands here to Sea Surface Temperature, not Surface Skin Temperature).
Suggestions? This service's list of variable names is not complete. If you want to add a commonly used variable name or make a correction, please email it to bob.simons at noaa.gov.

Want To Do Oceanic/Atmospheric Variable Name Conversions from within a Computer Program, Script, or Web Page?

If you change the extension of this web page's URL from .html to .txt, ERDDAP will respond with just the text result.

An example which converts a variable name to a full name is
http://apdrc.soest.hawaii.edu/erddap/convert/oceanicAtmosphericVariableNames.txt?variableName=sst
An example which converts a full name into a variable name is
http://apdrc.soest.hawaii.edu/erddap/convert/oceanicAtmosphericVariableNames.txt?fullName=Sea%20Surface%20Temperature

Percent Encoding - The parameter values in the URL (the parts after '=' signs) must be properly
percent encoded (external link)

: all characters other than A-Za-z0-9_-!.~'()* must be encoded as %HH,
where HH is the 2 digit hexadecimal value of the character, for example, a space becomes
%20. Characters above #127 must be converted to UTF-8 bytes, then each UTF-8 byte must
be percent encoded (ask a programmer for help). There are
web sites that percent encode and decode for you (external link)

ERDDAP, Version 1.80
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