First released in 1999, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) has been a stalwart of standards used to flexibly serve map-based imagery through an HTTP interface for two decades.  While GIBS has long used the newer OGC Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) to rapidly distribute its earth science data visualizations, we've found that there are still a number of use cases which are better served by the WMS interface.  These include:

• Geographic Information System (GIS) Client Support - users can configure their GIS client to interact with the WMS interface to facilitate an interactive experience with the GIBS visualizations.
• Custom Image Request - users can interact directly with the WMS interface to request custom images defined by their own bounding box and output dimensions, layer list and order, and output format.

Our new service is available in the "Geographic" (EPSG:4326), Web Mercator (EPSG:3857), Arctic polar stereographic (EPSG:3413), and Antarctic polar stereographic (EPSG:3031) projections.  And, of course, it supports time-based access to GIBS' historical archive of visualizations.  

Check out our updated API documentation for WMS and GIS documentation to see how you might use the new GIBS WMS!