One of the missions that NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) undertakes is the summarization and compilation of a variety of climate statistics from their archive of weather data that have been submitted to the Center from the national network of weather stations. These summaries are then disseminated, providing the public with information about the climate of the nation, whether on a local, state or regional level. The predecessor to NCEI, the National Climatic Data Center (or NCDC) published several series identified under the title "The Climatography of the United States." Literally, climatography represents a quantitative description of climate that usually involve development of tables and charts that portray the characteristic values of selected climatic elements at a station or over an area. Some of these climatographies provided a variety of daily, monthly and annual normal climate data for agricultural, transportation and other interests for 1971-2000 standard climatological averaging interval.
New normals for the basic climate elements (temperature and precipitation) covering the new 1981-2010 interval became available in July 2011. Within the last year, NCEI has provided the public access to dynamically generated climatographies for monthly, annual/seasonal, daily and hourly normals for several thousand individual stations throughout the nation. Climographs, or simple graphs of the monthly normals data for temperature and precipitation, can be generated by accessing NCEI's "1981-2010 Climate Normals -Climographs" link. The supporting data used to build these graphs are also available. Selection of the Data Access tab will provide the opportunity to select Monthly, Daily, Annual/Seasonal or Hourly normals on the Data Tools page.
For comparison with past climate conditions, the legacy climatographies that NCDC produced based on the 1971-2000 standard climatological averaging interval remain available online:
Climatography of the United States No. 20 "Monthly Station Climate Summaries for 1971-2000"
This climatography publication contains station summaries of the temperature, precipitation, snow, and degree-day unit elements averaged for the 1971-2000 interval for 4273 stations throughout the coterminous United States. The statistics include means, median (precipitation and snow elements), extremes, mean number of days exceeding threshold values, and probabilities for monthly precipitation and freeze data. A table for each station includes heating, cooling, and growing degree-day units for selected base temperatures.
These data in this climatography, arranged alphabetically by state, can be obtained in either for the each station or from the entire state in Adobe PDF format.
Climatography of the United States No. 20, Supplement No. 1 -- "Freeze/Frost Data for 1971-2000"
This climatography publication contains station freeze/frost probability tables for each state that include the dates of probable first and last occurrence, during the year beginning 1 August and ending the following 31 July of freeze related temperatures, probable duration where the temperature exceeds certain freeze related values; and the probability of experiencing a given temperature, or less, during the year period 1 August through 31 July.
These data in this climatography, arranged alphabetically by state, can be obtained in either Adobe PDF or text format.
Climatography of the United States No. 20, Supplement No. 2 --"Snow Normals for 1971-2000"
This climatography publication contains seasonal normals averaged for the 1971-2000 interval of mean snowfall at 503 stations, mean snow depth at 267 stations, and the number of days with measurable snowfall (greater than 0.1 inch) and with snowfall greater than 1.0 inch at 525 stations.
The CLIM20 Supplement No. 2 product is available for free download in text format for the nation.
Climatography of the United States Number 81 -- "Monthly Station Normals of Temperature, Precipitation, and Heating and Cooling Degree Days, 1971 - 2000"
This document provides monthly climatic normals data for 7937 sites that record temperature and/or precipitation data, including First Order stations at National Weather Service Offices, principal climatological stations, and volunteer "cooperative" observer stations across the United States and its territories. The data contained this publication are based on monthly maximum, minimum, and mean temperature and monthly total precipitation records collected for each year in the 30-year period of 1971 through 2000.
The data in this climatography, arranged alphabetically by state, can be obtained in Adobe PDF format or text format.
Climatography of the United States, No. 81, Supplement No. 1 --"Precipitation Probabilities and Quintiles, 1971-2000"
This supplement contains the monthly and annual precipitation values for each of the 7937 stations in the Climatography No. 81 document corresponding to three probability levels: 0.10, 0.50, and 0.90. The CLIM81 Supplement No. 1 product is available for free download in either Adobe PDF format or text format for the entire nation.
Climatography of the United States, No. 81, Supplement No. 2 -- "Annual Degree Days to Selected Bases, 1971-2000"
This supplement contains annual heating and cooling degree-day normals for the 7937 stations in Climatography No. 81 have been computed to various base temperatures (65, 60, 57, 55, 50, 45, and 40 degrees Fahrenheit for heating degree days and 70, 65, 60, 57, 55, 50, and 45 degrees Fahrenheit for cooling degree days). The CLIM81 Supplement No. 2 product is available for free download for free download in either Adobe PDF format or text format for the entire nation.
Climatography of the United States Number 84 -- "Daily Normals and Precipitation Probabilities, 1971 - 2000"
This document contains the daily climatic normals data from the 7937 observing sites described above that record temperature and/or precipitation data. These data include daily 1971-2000 normal maximum, minimum, and mean temperature, heating and cooling degree day units and precipitation for each day of the year, four seasonal averages (Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn), and the annual average or total. Monthly and annual precipitation probabilities and quintiles are also included.
These data in this climatography, arranged alphabetically by state, can be obtained in either ASCII or Web format.
Climatography of the United States Number 85 -- "Divisional Normals and Standard Deviations of Temperature, Precipitation, Heating and Cooling Degree Days, 1931 - 2000 (1931 - 1960, 1941 - 1970, 1951 - 1980, 1961 - 1990, 1971- 2000.)"
This document includes normals and standard deviations for the five 30-year normals periods and the 70-year period between 1931 - 2000 for each of 344 climate divisions found across the continental United States, plus additional climate divisions in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Pacific trust territories. The normals and standard deviations include values for each month along with the annual value.
The CLIM85 product is available for free download in separate files in either Adobe PDF format or text format.
In addition, Climatography of the United States No. 60 -- " Climates of the States" represents a narrative describing the general climate and associated geography of the state. Some Internet links to various state and station climate summaries and other weather data are also included in the documents.
The individual documents in this series are available by state.
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Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@aos.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2017, The American Meteorological Society.