Climate Monitoring Products and Services at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information

The National Centers for Environmental Information has provided climate monitoring information for several decades. This mission element was formalized when the Climate Monitoring Branch was started at what is now called the National Centers for Environmental Information at Asheville, NC in 1998. At that time the branch produced only basic products including the more familiar CONUS temperature and precipitation maps and global temperature time series. Over the years, the Branch has expanded its suite of products in response to requests or requirements from government, private-sector and academic users. It now manages dozens of tools and services designed to inform scientists, engineers, resource managers, investors and the general public to make well informed decisions.

In recent years, the development of climate-quality gridded data and the expansion of climate-quality products into Alaska has fostered more geographic flexibility beyond traditional geographic areas like climate divisions, and beyond basic-state analyses to those that speak to specific hazards or phenomena. This presentation will provide a high-level overview of NCEI’s suite of Monitoring products, focusing more deeply on newer tools and services, and those that are in development or being considered for development.