National Weather Service Digital Services: Building a Weather Database Together

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service (NWS) provides access to gridded forecasts of weather elements through the National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD). NDFD contains a seamless mosaic of forecasts in digital form from NWS field offices working in collaboration with the National Centers for Environmental Prediction. The database is made available to all customers and partners to meet their needs for faster access to accurate, easy to understand information provided in new formats. Broadcast meteorologists can use the gridded data alone or in combination with various datasets to produce high-resolution products for broadcast or posting online to meet your viewers' needs.

Through our close business relationships with our partners and customers, the NWS has identified the requirements for digital data (e.g., spatial and temporal resolution, accuracy, formats, content). The NWS eagerly seeks to work collaboratively with the broadcast community to create optimized interoperable information systems and sustain the quality and reliability of the underlying weather information.

The long-term goal of the NWS is to produce and maintain high quality climate, water and weather information. Improvement of Digital Services includes the streamlining of the data exchange with the customers as well as the use of open, standards-based formats (e.g., Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Geographic Information System (GIS) formats).