A generalized method for accessing western U.S. climate data and products

A variety of large weather and climate networks, primarily federal, exist in the western United States. Individually and collectively, data and information derived from these networks have great potential to address a variety of applications. To avoid excessive duplication of effort the Western Regional Climate Center has been developing ways to access and display data and products which span the various sources of data. Several principles have guided this development: 1) a user orientation is foremost priority, 2) the "look and feel" of the interface should be common, 3) both "climate" and "weather" products should be accessible (some networks produce both), 4) a wide range of user capabilities must be addressed, 5) flexibility to respond to changing technology and applications must be preserved, 6) speed and responsiveness are important, 7) the differences among the networks do matter and are important, and 8) the approach must be generally compatible with national efforts such as that of the Unified Climate Access Network (UCAN). However, the main need is to most effectively serve the region, which has numerous distinctions from the remainder of the country. The principal current networks which are now included are RAWS, Snotel, coop, metar and first order, Agrimet, and a few additional local networks. Users for such a system are both external (the entire public at large) and internal (WRCC staff who must be able to efficiently access products from a large number of stations).