Ontario's Volunteer Climate Network: Online Data Entry and Quality Control

Environment Canada Ontario Region has a volunteer co-op climate network of 250 sites. Each site records daily temperature and precipitation in order to help define the climate of the Province of Ontario. In response to the need for more real-time data as well as the need to reduce expenses such as manual data entry,postage and handling;Environment Canada Ontario developed ONTAP(Ontario Telephone Aquisition Package). Initially using just the telephone, ONTAP was expanded in 2000 to accept data online via the Internet. The result has meant a reduction in expenses, automated quality assurance and data availability from observation to archive in minutes rather than months.