National Climatic Data Center

[Christine Chiu <pitsco@pitsco.com>]

New sites for those interested in climate and meteorology:

> The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) announces the availability
> of three new on line services through its WWW site
> (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov):
>
> 1)  Interactive Visualization of Global Daily Data:  Located in the
> 'interactive visualization of climate data' area, this system
> previously provided graphical analysis and data plots for U.S. climate
> divisional data and National Weather Service summary of day data.
> This has now been expanded to include global summary of day data for
> approximately 8000 worldwide stations.  (Additional stations will be
> added to the system as time and resources permit.)  This global daily
> data was previously (and still is) available as ASCII data files for
> 1994 to present.  Now, this new system provides for graphical displays
> of the most recent 18 months of data, with the latest month normally
> available 5-6 weeks after the end of the data month (e.g., Oct 95
> accessible in early December).  The 12 elements which can be
> graphed are:
>
> Daily means for temperature, dew point, sea level pressure, station
> pressure, visibility, and wind speed.
> Daily extremes for sustained wind speed, wind gust, and
> maximum/minimum temperature.
> Daily precipitation.
> Snow depth.
>
> The user selects a region of interest from a global map; then selects
> the country (or countries) needed; and then the desired station(s),
> element(s), and time period.  The system allows for either GIF or
> Postscript output.  For example, you can display:
>
> August 1995 mean daily temperature for Vostok, Antarctica.
> January 1995 mean daily wind speed and temperature for Mount
> Washington, New Hampshire.
> Chicago's daily mean dew points for June through August 1995.
> August 1995 daily rainfall for Baguio and Manila in the Philippines.
> February 1995 daily snow depth for Valdez, Alaska and Blue Canyon,
> California.
> July 1995 daily maximum temperatures for Alert and Eureka, Canada.
> November-December 1995 daily mean wind speed for London, England.
>
>
> 2)  Images of Hurricanes and other Storms:  Located in the 'on-line
> data access' area, this system includes multiple satellite images of
> all of this year's hurricanes, along with images of significant
> hurricanes of previous years (e.g., Gilbert, Andrew, Hugo)--over 160
> images in all.  Several other types of images are also included such as:
>
> The first GOES-9 IR and visible images
> Tornadic thunderstorms
> AVHRR 'close-ups' of numerous areas
> The March 1993 'storm of the century'
>
>
> 3)  1995-1996 Technical Reports on Weather Events, Etc:  Located in
> the 'products, publications, and services' area, we have reports on:
>
> The Blizzard of '96
> Billion Dollar Weather Disasters of 1980-1996
> The California flooding of last winter
> Hurricane Opal
> Probabilities for a white Christmas
>
> The same page provides access to seven reports produced during 1993-
> 1994 covering events such as the March '93 blizzard, the 1993 Midwest
> flooding, the February '94 Southeast ice storm, and July '94 flooding in
> Georgia.  The reports are available as ASCII text with separate GIF
> images, and as Wordperfect files.  They include discussions of the
> events, climatic data tables, computer-analyzed maps of the affected
> areas, satellite images, and NEXRAD images.
>
>
> We encourage users to try these new products and systems, and to let
> us know if you encounter any problems.
>
> NCDC/Neal Lott
> nlott@ncdc.noaa.gov
> http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov

Christine Chiu
GUI Designer/webmaster
Pitsco Technology Education
catalog@pitsco.com
http://www.usa.net/~pitsco/