ngdc.noaa.gov gshhg url no longer valid

[jeffleifer]

Seems this endpoint no longer exists. As a result cartopy can't download the coastline files.
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/data/gshhg/latest

[greglucas]

It seems like they were removed and the original links to the dataset are all removed as well. https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/shorelines.html

I have sent an e-mail to NOAA's contact us link to ask if they have moved somewhere else.

[jeffleifer]

I was able to get them from here manually:
https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhg/gshhg-shp-2.3.7.zip"

[greglucas]

For some reason that wasn't working for me earlier, but now it does. Should we update the base url or provide the one you have as a fallback?

cartopy/lib/cartopy/io/shapereader.py

Lines 457 to 460 in 81c5f10

	_GSHHS_URL_TEMPLATE = (
	'https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/data/'
	f'gshhs/latest/gshhg-shp-{gshhs_version}.zip'
	)

[jeffleifer]

What url are you using? I'm still getting 404 for the noaa gshhg. The Hawaii link is still working.

[jeffleifer]

https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/documents-reports/notice-of-changes/2025-notice-of-changes/shorelinecoastline-resources
"Shoreline/Coastline Databases webpage are being decommissioned and will no longer be available.... The data can be accessed from NCEI's archives. They can also be accessed at the University of Hawaii."

The new "archive" link is here https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/oceans/archive/arc0234/0304143/1.1/data/0-data/GSHHS_shp/
But looks like they recognize Hawaii as an official host of the dataset as well

[greglucas]

Thanks for that sleuthing! This might be slightly tricky to do because now I get the Hawaii url to be unresponsive (maybe too many people who were using NOAA switched over and their servers can't handle it?). The new NOAA url doesn't use a zip file anymore, it uses individual files that we'd have to download in a different way.

I put up a PR to try and use the new url from Hawaii, feel free to comment/review on #2659

[ocefpaf]

What are the licenses on those files? I wonder if we could re-distribute them from a GitHub repo as release assets.

[greglucas]

https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhg/index.html

Starting with version 2.2.2, GSHHG has been released under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

[ocefpaf]

Starting with version 2.2.2, GSHHG has been released under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

Cool, looks like a redistribution is possible then. What is the format that cartopy uses? Netcdf4, shapefile, or native binary? The netcdf4 ones are just 55 MB for 2.3.7 and could be added as assets on a cartopy release itself, or from a repo that only hosts these files. I usually commit only a README for the files with the checksum, mint a release, and upload them as assets.

Is this something cartopy devs are willing to do/use?

[dopplershift]

We're using the shapefile versions.