A digital solution to improve communication efficiency between environmental sensors and webservers (the osd2ERDDAP API).

The purpose of this report is to document the communications protocol and test system osd2ERDDAP developed as part of the Enhancing Climate Observations, Models and Data (ECO MAD) project. The approach allows deployed sensors to telemeter small quantities of arbitrary tabular Ocean Science Data (osd) directly to an ERDDAP server via the Internet in a way that is more efficient for the sensor than using ERDDAP’s existing HTML Forms interface. ERDDAP is a data server that provides a simple and consistent way to download subsets of scientific datasets in common file formats and make graphs and maps. It is the online server used by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to publicly share environmental data in a format that meets international data management standards. Future use of this API with a range of ocean sensors and ERDDAP will increase the efficiency of data streaming. In turn this reduces power (and associated maintenance) requirements that is vital to deliver low-cost long-term monitoring networks, which support climate research and the management of climate impacts.