1. Data Browsing/Mining/Metadata
OTGA – UEM TRAINING COURSE – FUNDAMENTALS OF OCEACOGRAPHIC DATA MANAGEMENT , JANUARY 2017, MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE
Prepared by: Harrison Ong’anda,
National Coordinator,
Kenya National Oceanographic Data Center (KeNODC)

2. Data Browsing/Mining
During the past 3 years many state-of-the-art systems have been developed to bridge gaps between users and data resources, completely replacing the old download-reformat-display paradigm. 
A leader in the development of innovative approaches has been the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) which focuses on melding environmental datasets into mapping systems.
Because self-describing formats (HDF, GRIB, NetCDF) are such important formats in these recent developments, general methods for their use are also included here

3. THREDDS servers
Thematic Realtime Environmental Distributed Data Services
Middleware to bridge the gap between data providers and data users
Catalogs are the heart of the THREDDS concept
They are XML documents that describe on-line datasets
The current focus of THREDDS development is the THREDDS Data Server (TDS),
Actually serves the contents of the datasets, in addition to providing catalogs and metadata for them
The TDS uses the Common Data Model to read datasets in various formats, and serves them through OPeNDAP, OGC Web Coverage Service, NetCDF subset, and bulk HTTP file transfer services.“

4. OPeNDAP Server
Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OPeNDAP)-
framework that simplifies all aspects of scientific data networking.
provides software which makes local data accessible to remote locations regardless of local storage format.
also provides tools for transforming existing applications into OPeNDAP clients (i.e., enabling them to remotely access OPeNDAP served data).

5. LAS Server Live Access Server http://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/LAS/home
Enables the web user to:
visualize data with on-the-fly graphics
request custom subsets of variables in a choice of file formats
access background reference material about the data (metadata)
compare (difference) variables from distributed locations

6. SOS servers Sensor Observation Service (SOS) Servers
Uncertainty surrounds the future of SOS, which is not being widely used yet. 
Many initial test sites are apparently now inoperable

7. Web Mapping Service http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wms
The OpenGIS® Web Map Service Interface Standard (WMS) provides a simple HTTP interface for requesting geo-registered map images from one or more distributed geospatial databases.
A WMS request defines the geographic layer(s) and area of interest to be processed.
The response to the request is one or more geo-registered map images (returned as JPEG, PNG, etc) that can be displayed in a browser application.

8. Managing Sea Surface Temperature (SST)
Managing Sea Surface Temperature (SST) Time-Series from Long-Term or Classic Climatologies:  US National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) Live Access Server (LAS)
The NODC is the final depository for a number of satellite imagery products from other programs, and they have boldly taken on the job of organizing huge amounts of data into an easily usable LAS. 
Using this LAS or any of the many LAS installations available on the net, you can revisit global conditions for specific times in the past (various intervals; sometimes very distant), or (for sites with "classic" climatologies) you can see the usual conditions (averaged over many years) for particular days, weeks, months or seasons

9. Selected LAS Servers
AVISO (Archiving, Validation and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic data)
Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) - Attempts to visualize at-depth Argo and other GTSPP operational data; unfortunately often offline
My NASA Data (NASA data for educators; 5 possible choices at this HTML address)
NASA PODAAC - Mixture of near-real-time and older satellite data
NVODS (National Virtual Oceanographic Data System)
OSMC (NOAA's Ocean Observing System Monitoring Center, with custom user interface; seems to be unfinished, providing location information but not data)
PacIOOS (Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System)
PFEL (Pacific Fisheries Environmental Laboratory; 6 possible choices at this HTML address)
Unified Access Framework GEOIDE - New US NOAA project to make THREDDS catalog publishing easier and more comprehensive through all NOAA datasets
US Global Data Assimilation Experiment (USGODAE) - Global LAS with incomplete demo versions of Argo display capabilities similar to INCOIS