A new paradigm in near real-time cooperative data ingest at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center

Karsten Shein, Timothy W. Owen

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

As the Nation's official archive for climate information, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is charged with preservation and accessibility of a quality digital record of Cooperative (COOP) Network data and metadata. This record has historically been derived through the imaging and keying of so-called 'B-91' forms that are sent by observers, via the National Weather Service (NWS), to NCDC. The processing time, including quality assurance checks and serial publication, typically is 45-60 days from the end of the data month. Technological and communication advances, coupled with integrated climate, weather and water reporting needs have reached a point where near realtime (i.e., daily) reporting of observations is feasible. While ASOS data have long been directly reported to NCDC in this time horizon, COOP data reporting is delayed by the continued use of monthly paper forms. Rapid data reporting is fundamental to the success of the U.S. effort in Global Earth Observations, especially for such time-sensitive activities as the drought monitoring of the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS). Additionally, improving reporting frequency is important to the transition of Legacy COOP under NOAA's Environmental Real-Time Observing Network (NERON, 2006). NCDC is coordinating with its Regional Climate Centers (RCC) and the NWS to develop a Web interface based on existing systems (e.g., Weather Transmitted Cooperative Observer Data Encoded Report (WxCoder), Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRAHS) and Environment Canada's Cooperative Online Temperature and Precipitation Entry System (COOLTAP)) to facilitate the electronic submission of COOP data to NCDC, and thus to the climate community on a daily basis. To this end, the following guiding principles have been identified: 1) Provide an efficient, easy-to-use data entry system for participating COOP observers, 2) Ensure timely availability of COOP data to all customers, 3) Improve data quality through automated near-realtime data quality control (QC), 4) Achieve a near-paperless electronic data collection, transmission, and archiving system.

Original languageEnglish (US)
StatePublished - 2007
Externally publishedYes
Event87th AMS Annual Meeting - San Antonio, TX, United States
Duration: Jan 14 2007Jan 18 2007

Other

Other87th AMS Annual Meeting
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Antonio, TX
Period1/14/071/18/07

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Environmental Engineering
  • Global and Planetary Change
  • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

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