Recent advances in in-situ data access, summarization, and visualization at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center

During the past two years, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center has developed several new online capabilities and products for customers. This includes expanded access to global datasets, data summarization, and a Geographic Information System (GIS) interface. The new capabilities and products include: 1) Access to a global dataset of integrated surface data; 2) Access to numerous climate normals products; 3) Data summarization capabilities using the integrated surface data; 4) Access to the full period of record of NCDC's Serial Publications and other imaged products and forms; 5) A “local climatological data” product featuring improved data quality and quantity; 6) User-friendly GIS capabilities to quickly locate data of interest; 7) A new data search page, where users can query for available products based on type of data, location, and time resolution; and 8) New data graphing capabilities for selected data. This paper briefly describes and illustrates these new capabilities.