Provider Catalog

CFS ships 33 connectors — 31 live-verified against their upstream stores (the auth-gated ones with real CDS and Earthdata credentials), 2 offline-verified pending access or provider-specific credentials.

The machine-readable catalog (resolution, bbox, license, citation, canonical variables, caveats) is committed at inventory/providers.yaml, and the registry is discoverable at runtime (cfs providers, cfs products).

Live upstreams

CFS is a passthrough service: every fetch hits the provider's live store, so transient upstream outages (a THREDDS restart, an S3 hiccup, CDS queue congestion) can surface as fetch errors independent of CFS itself.

Connectors

slug	product	grid	access	auth	verified
era5_arco	ECMWF ERA5 (0.25°, hourly)	regular	GCS Zarr	anonymous	live
aorc	NOAA AORC v1.1 (1 km, hourly)	regular	S3 Zarr	anonymous	live
aorc_nwm	NOAA AORC v1.1 NWM-projected (1 km)	2-D LCC	S3 Zarr	anonymous	live
nwm_operational	NOAA NWM operational forcing (1 km, hourly, real-time)	2-D LCC	S3 NetCDF	anonymous	live
gfs	NOAA GFS atmospheric forecast (0.25°, hourly, global)	regular	S3 GRIB2 (byte-range)	anonymous	live
gefs	NOAA GEFS ensemble forecast (0.25°, 3-hourly, global)	regular	S3 GRIB2 (byte-range)	anonymous	live
chirps	CHIRPS v2.0 daily precip (0.05°)	regular	HTTP NetCDF	anonymous	live
chirts	CHIRTS daily temperature (0.05°, global tropics)	regular	HTTP NetCDF	anonymous	live
persiann_cdr	PERSIANN-CDR daily satellite precip (0.25°, 1983–)	regular	HTTP NetCDF	anonymous	live
rdrs	RDRS / CaSR v3.2 (Canada, ~10 km, hourly)	2-D rotated pole	OPeNDAP	anonymous	live
barra2	BoM BARRA-R2 (Australia, ~12 km, hourly)	regular	NCI THREDDS ncss	anonymous	live
conus404	CONUS404 (4 km WRF, hourly)	2-D LCC	OSN Zarr	anonymous	live
hrrr	NOAA HRRR analysis + forecast (3 km)	2-D LCC	hrrrzarr S3	anonymous	live
era5_land	ECMWF ERA5-Land (0.1°, hourly)	regular	CDS API	CDS	live (creds)
era5_cds	ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis (0.25°, hourly)	regular	CDS API	CDS	live (creds)
wfde5	WFDE5 bias-corrected ERA5 forcing (0.5°, hourly)	regular	CDS API	CDS	live (creds)
carra	Copernicus Arctic Regional Reanalysis (2.5 km)	regular (interp.)	CDS API	CDS	live (creds)
cerra	Copernicus European Regional Reanalysis (5.5 km)	regular (interp.)	CDS API	CDS	live (creds)
eobs	E-OBS European gridded observations (0.1°/0.25° daily)	regular	CDS API	CDS	live (creds)
merra2	NASA MERRA-2 (0.5°×0.625°, hourly)	regular	OPeNDAP	Earthdata	live (creds)
nldas	NLDAS-2 (0.125°, hourly, CONUS)	regular	OPeNDAP	Earthdata	live (creds)
gpm	GPM IMERG Daily precip (Final/Early/Late)	regular	OPeNDAP	Earthdata	live (creds)
cmorph	NOAA CPC CMORPH CDR daily precip (0.25°)	regular	HTTP tar NetCDF	anonymous	live
daymet	Daymet V4R1 (1 km daily, N. America)	2-D LCC (x/y)	OPeNDAP	Earthdata	live (creds)
gldas	NASA GLDAS-2 Noah (0.25°, 3-hourly, global land)	regular	OPeNDAP	Earthdata	live (creds)
fldas	NASA FLDAS Noah (0.1°, monthly, global/Africa land)	regular	OPeNDAP	Earthdata	live (creds)
nex_gddp	NEX-GDDP-CMIP6 (0.25° daily projections)	regular	S3 NetCDF	anonymous	live
na_cordex	NA-CORDEX (0.22°/0.44° daily projections, N. America)	regular	S3 Zarr	anonymous	live
gridmet	gridMET daily CONUS surface meteorology (~4 km)	regular	OPeNDAP	anonymous	live
nclimgrid_daily	NOAA nClimGrid-Daily (5 km, CONUS)	regular	OPeNDAP	anonymous	live
narr	NOAA NARR daily monolevel fields (32 km)	2-D LCC	OPeNDAP	anonymous	live
mswep	MSWEP precipitation (0.1°, daily/3-hourly)	regular	rclone / GDrive	Drive access	offline
em_earth	EM-Earth (0.1° daily, global)	regular	S3 / FRDR HTTPS / local staging	AWS credentials (S3) or anonymous (FRDR)	live

"live" means a real fetch against the upstream store returned physical values; "live (creds)" the same, using real CDS or Earthdata credentials; "offline" means the connector's path/subsetting/conversion logic is verified against synthetic data but a live fetch is pending access (see the notes below).

Per-provider notes

Rolling-window archives

• cmorph — the NOAA CPC daily-tar archive only hosts a rolling recent window (roughly the last couple of months). Historical years are not on that endpoint; a fetch outside the window raises a clear "no tar listed" error.
• nwm_operational — reads the real-time NWM forcing from noaa-nwm-pds (S3), generating lat/lon from the same 1 km LCC projection as aorc_nwm. Only the analysis_assim configuration is exposed (its tm00 analysis maps cleanly to a valid time); the bucket keeps only a rolling ~4-week window, so fetches must target recent dates.

Offline-verified connectors

• mswep — distributed only via a GloH2O-shared Google Drive folder, reached through the external rclone CLI. The connector's path and conversion logic are verified offline (with a clear setup error otherwise); a real fetch needs rclone plus a configured Drive remote with granted access. Exact unblock sequence:

  1. register at https://www.gloh2o.org/mswep/ (free for non-commercial use) with the Google account you will use for Drive;
  2. wait for the GloH2O confirmation email — it shares the MSWEP_V* Drive folders with that account ("Shared with me");
  3. install rclone and run rclone config → new remote, name GoogleDrive (the connector default; override via MSWEP_RCLONE_REMOTE), type drive, default scopes, browser auth with the same account;
  4. verify with rclone lsd --drive-shared-with-me GoogleDrive: (the MSWEP_V316 folder should list);
  5. run the prepared validation script (/tmp/parity-exp/validate_mswep_when_unblocked.sh) to exercise the doc-fixed paths on both the CFS and SYMFLUENCE sides and record a parity grade.
  6. em_earth — two sources. The default S3 bucket denies anonymous reads (allows listing only), so it needs AWS credentials (config={"anon": False}). The FRDR route (config={"source": "frdr"}) needs no credentials at all: FRDR's documented stable per-file links (https://www.frdr-dfdr.ca/repo/files/6/published/publication_542/ submitted_data/EM_Earth_v1/…) 302 to the Globus HTTPS collection (g-f0a056.cd4fe.0ec8.data.globus.org), which serves anonymous GETs — live-verified 2026-06-12 (an earlier probe of the landing page missed this; the dataset page itself only advertises Globus transfer and the email-gated Zip). The EM_Earth_v1/ layout mirrors the S3 keys under nc/ exactly, so the same key construction serves both. Caveats: files are whole-month globals (~100–300 MB per variable-month — set data_dir so they are cached and reused), and the FRDR route covers the deterministic daily product only (FRDR's probabilistic/hourly trees are continent- and member-split).

  Pre-staged files (e.g. bulk Globus transfers from collection 515c70c4-2eb8-4f2a-b406-7959b5edc28d, path /6/published/publication_542/submitted_data) are picked up from config={"data_dir": ...} — either the archive-relative layout <data_dir>/deterministic_raw_daily/<var>/<file>.nc or flat <data_dir>/<file>.nc — before any network access.

  Units are file-verified (2026-06-12, FRDR deterministic daily): prcp is mm day-1 (→ /86400), temperatures Celsius (→ +273.15); the long-standing "precip units unverified" warning is retired. The files also carry prcp_corrected (PBCOR WorldClim-corrected); the connector ships raw prcp, matching the native SYMFLUENCE handler. Validation (exp17, Colorado box, 2018-06 ×14 days): CFS canonical output is bitwise identical to the documented derivations applied to the raw FRDR values (tmean/tdew + 273.15 exactly; prcp × (1/86400) exactly, ≤ 1 float32 ulp vs the /86400 op order). Native-vs-community parity remains pending AWS credentials: the native acquirer is S3-only (it grew an EM_EARTH_S3_ANON: false credentialed path after exp7, but has no FRDR route and no local-staging mode for the daily product), and the bucket 403s anonymous GETs.

Forecasts

• gfs — global 0.25° GFS surface forcing from the noaa-gfs-bdp-pds S3 GRIB2 archive. Reads each file's .idx byte-offset index and HTTP byte-range fetches only the surface messages it needs (~MB, not the ~1.5 GB whole file), decoding with cfgrib (the forecast extra). For a requested range it uses the most recent 00/06/12/18 UTC cycle at/before the start; valid times map to lead hours (1-hourly to f120, 3-hourly to f384). All fields are identity SI (u/v winds, prate flux); radiation and precip are interval averages, absent at f000 (analysis). Live-verified (US, T 292–300 K, SW 80–228 W m⁻²).
• gefs — the ensemble companion to gfs: same .idx/byte-range/cfgrib machinery over the GEFS 0.25° select product (noaa-gefs-pds), returning a member dimension (control gec00 + perturbations gep01–gep30, selected via config={"members": [...]}; default all 31). 3-hourly leads to f240 (the select product stops there). Instantaneous fields are identity SI. Precip (APCP) and radiation (DSWRF/DLWRF) ship as 6-hour-bucket quantities (0-3, 0-6, 6-9, …) — APCP accumulates, radiation averages — so they are de-bucketed by lead hour (value-sign reset detection is unsafe when a fresh bucket out-rains the previous one): cur−prev for accumulations, 2·cur−prev for averages, then APCP becomes a flux while radiation stays W m⁻². The select product ships RH, not specific humidity, so q is derived from 2 m RH + temperature + pressure (Bolton 1980, cfs.derive.humidity); RH is consumed as a derivation input, never exposed. Live-verified (non-negative precip, SW ~0 overnight after de-averaging, derived q 9–17 g/kg, member spread visible).

Climate projections

• nex_gddp — NEX-GDDP-CMIP6 downscaled projections. A projection has a model × scenario × ensemble axis: the scenario is the product ID (nex_gddp:historical, nex_gddp:ssp245, nex_gddp:ssp585, …); the model/member are connector config, e.g. get_connector("nex_gddp")(config={"model": "MPI-ESM1-2-HR", "member": "r1i1p1f1"}) (default ACCESS-CM2 / r1i1p1f1). The choices are recorded in FetchResult.provenance and as dataset attrs (cmip6_model/cmip6_scenario/cmip6_member).
• na_cordex — North-American CORDEX regional projections (S3 Zarr, NCAR ncar-na-cordex): experiments eval/hist-rcp45/hist-rcp85, with grid (NAM-22i/NAM-44i) and bias-correction (raw/mbcn-Daymet/ mbcn-gridMET) as config knobs; returns the CORDEX multi-model ensemble (member_id dimension). Relative humidity (hurs) is not offered — NA-CORDEX lacks the surface pressure needed to derive specific humidity.

CDS connectors

All need ~/.cdsapirc and the relevant dataset licences accepted on the CDS account.

• carra / cerra — delivered interpolated to a regular grid via the CDS grid parameter (the native grids are projected). Both ship 2 m RH rather than specific humidity, so specific_humidity is derived (Bolton 1980). Live-confirmed naming trap: downwelling longwave is thermal_surface_radiation_downwards on the CARRA form but surface_thermal_radiation_downwards (ERA5-style) on the CERRA form — and CDS silently drops an unknown variable name instead of rejecting the request, so getting this wrong yields files with no longwave (caught and fixed in the 2026-06-12 parity campaign).
• wfde5 — needs the required CDS product token (wfde5) and an underscore version (2_1), confirmed against the live form constraints. Downloads full half-degree monthly NetCDFs (one CDS request per variable; precipitation = Rainf + Snowf) and subsets locally.
• eobs — fills the European observational gap (CFS otherwise has only reanalysis there). Unlike the other CDS connectors, E-OBS has no server-side area subset, so the full European domain is downloaded once per variable (large, cached) and subset locally. Exposes only the cleanly-convertible fields — tg→air_temperature, rr→precipitation_flux, qq→shortwave, fg→wind_speed — and defers pp (sea-level, not surface, pressure) and hu (relative humidity needs a surface pressure E-OBS lacks). Request tokens: grid_resolution 0_1deg/0_25deg, version 31_0e, period full_period; version override via config={"version": "30_0e"}. Live-verified once all E-OBS dataset licences were accepted on the CDS account.
• era5_cds — standard ERA5 single levels via the CDS API (a zip of instant + accumulated NetCDFs, merged), as a credentialed alternative to the anonymous era5_arco.

Earthdata connectors

All need EARTHDATA_TOKEN (or ~/.netrc / EARTHDATA_USERNAME + EARTHDATA_PASSWORD) and the "NASA GESDISC DATA ARCHIVE" app authorized on the URS profile.

• nldas — opens one OPeNDAP endpoint per hour: fine for short windows, slow for long ranges (warned in the FetchResult).
• gldas — same GES DISC hydro1 host as nldas; all GLDAS-2 Noah forcing fields are already canonical SI (identity mappings). Two products: gldas:noah025_3h (GLDAS-2.1, 2000→present) and gldas:noah025_3h_v20 (GLDAS-2.0, 1948–2014). Wind ships as a scalar speed only (no u/v), so it maps to wind_speed; opens one endpoint per 3-hour stamp (8/day), so long ranges are slow (warned in the FetchResult).
• fldas — reuses the GLDAS Earthdata/DAP4 path, all-identity SI, but the global product is monthly — good for climatology or seasonal forcing over Africa and the global land surface, too coarse for event-scale hydrology. Wind is a scalar speed; land-only (ocean is fill).
• gpm — IMERG Daily; adds the Early and Late near-real-time runs alongside Final.

Other notes

• barra2 — uses the anonymous NCI THREDDS NetcdfSubset service: the server does the bbox+time subset and returns a clean NetCDF, avoiding the OPeNDAP DAP2 truncation NCI's server exhibits under concurrent reads. All fields are CORDEX/CMIP CF names already in SI (identity mappings, including pr flux and huss); no dewpoint is published. Instantaneous fields are stamped on the hour and hourly means (pr/rsds/rlds) at the half-hour midpoint, so times are floored to the hour to share one axis. The grid is regular lat/lon on 0–360 longitudes (requests are normalized).
• hrrr — adds an sfc_fcst product (1-hour forecast) that provides precipitation flux, which the analysis product lacks.
• aorc_nwm — AORC v1.1 on the NWM v3.0 1 km LCC grid (S3 Zarr); lat/lon are generated from the LCC projection parameters.
• narr — includes dswrf/dlwrf (down short/longwave) radiation, live-verified against NOAA PSL. Carries occasional tiny-negative precipitation from the source fields (flagged by the advisory range QC).
• chirts — the temperature companion to chirps (UCSB CHC, global tropics, 0.05° daily, 1983–2016): Tmax/Tmin (°C) → air_temperature = mean + 273.15, read via HTTP byte-range from per-year chunked NetCDFs.
• persiann_cdr — global daily satellite-precip CDR (NCEI, 0.25°, 1983→present with multi-week latency). Per-day files carry an unpredictable creation-date suffix, so the connector resolves filenames from each year's directory index.

Adding a provider

Want a product that isn't here? Open a connector request, or implement it yourself — see the contributing guide for the connector pattern.