Comprehensive weather and climate data exist within many federal, regional, and state agencies. There is now more weather and climate information available than ever before, which can potentially improve decision making at multiple levels and across multiple sectors. However, much of the data are not in formats that are easily interpreted by the non-scientific community. Through the support of a multi-disciplinary collaboration involving the University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNCA), the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) at UNCA, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the North Carolina State Climate Office, and the Greenville-Spartanburg National Weather Service Forecast Office, the issue of making raw weather and climate data more meaningful to such local decision making groups as city and county councils, emergency mangers and first responders, community planners, and the general public is being addressed.

Geovisualization techniques, including geographic information systems (GIS), Google Earth, Mashups, and other open-source and online applications, were used to create a variety of integrated data products. The focus was to ingest weather and climate data from multiple sources and integrate the data with a variety of other datasets, including economic, cadastral, infrastructure, and physical data. Data integration occurred at a county and regional scale in order to facilitate local decision making about issues that affect these areas directly, such as weather-related hazards, climate change, and landuse planning.

This presentation will highlight many of the products that have been created and distributed in a local North Carolina region. Products have included virtual animations, web-based interactive sites, GIS viewers, and integrated educational outreach videos. Many of the products are 3D in nature in an effort to simulate a virtual experience of the data and locations that the data refer to. Dissemination of the products has included numerous education and outreach activities and presentations to various decision making groups, utilizing multiple platforms (e.g., VizWall, GeoDome, Internet). It appears that local decision makers and the general public relate well to weather and climate integrated products.