Climatological Data Sources
The Following Links are to Federal Government supported Climatological Data and Weather Sites:
The National Weather Service Homepage is the source for "United States Official Weather Forecast Products and Observations." There are links to Warnings, Conditions, Maps, Storm Prediction, Marine Weather, and Extended Forecasts.
As part of the National Weather Service - Eastern Region Individual Forecast Offices, several areas in South Carolina have local Forecast Offices. These include Columbia, Charleston, and Greenville/Spartanburg. Useful local weather information such as local forecasts, warnings, current weather conditions, drought information, aviation weather, and more, are available here.
The NOAA Weather Page contains links to other weather sites from NOAA and on the World Wide Web.
The Storm Prediction Center "monitors and forecasts severe and non-severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and other hazardous weather phenomena across conterminous United States -- 24 hours a day, every day of the year."
The mission of the National Hurricane Center is "to save lives, mitigate property loss, and improve economic efficiency by issuing watches, warnings, forecasts, and analyses of hazardous tropical weather." The site's information is divided geographically, by Atlantic/Caribbean or Eastern Pacific Region.
The FEMA Facts Room, a part of FEMA's online library, has links to disaster weather information, including disaster declaration maps and totals, billion dollar U.S. weather disasters, hurricanes, tornadoes and more.
The National Climatic Data Center is "The World's Largest Archive of Weather Data." There are sections on National, Regional, and State information.
The Climate Diagnostics Center has resources for identifying the nature and causes for climate variations using time scales.
United States Interactive Climate Pages from the Climate Diagnostics Center contain point and click information for individual cities and climate maps.
The Interactive Weather Information Network by the National Weather Service has a clickable map of the United States with links to Hourly Reports, State, Zone, and Short-term forecasts, Weather Summaries, Public Information, Climatic Data, Hydro Products, Aviation Products, Watches, Special Weather, and Warnings and Advisements.
NASA's Earth Observatory has links to information on the Atmosphere, Oceans, Land, Energy, Life, Heat and Energy, and Remote Sensing.
The Space Environment Center is the Official Source of Space Weather, including Alerts, Warnings, and Forecasts. This site includes links to Space Weather Now, online data about Solar, Interplanetary, Geomagnetic, and Near-Earth Space Weather, and education information - including a kids section.
The Joint Agricultural Weather Facility is jointly operated by the World Agricultural Outlook Board of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and NOAA. The site includes information on Episodic Weather Events, Agricultural Weather Highlights, the Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin (see below), Major World Crop Areas and Climatic Profiles, and more.
The Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin contains crop moisture maps, a drought monitor, weather data for delta and temperature departure maps, extreme maximum temperature, U.S. crops production highlights, growing degree day maps, national weather for selected cities, a national agriculture summary, crop progress and condition tables, state agriculture summaries, an international weather and crop summary, and the previous month's temperature and precipitation maps.
The following sources are password protected, and must be accessed through a library's Government Documents Department (such as the one in Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina):
Climatological Data contains each state's temperature and precipitation extremes, monthly summarized stational and divisional data (temperature and precipitation), daily precipitation inches, daily temperatures, soil temperatures, evaporation and wind, a station index, and notes.
Hourly Precipitation Data contains daily precipitation totals, hourly precipitation, and monthly precipitation maxima by station, as well as notes and a station index.
Monthly Climatic Data for the World contains Surface Data and Upper Air data tables from stations in countries throughout the world.
Shaunna E. HunterUniversity of South Carolina
College of Library & Information Science
CLIS734 - Fall 2000