The Cooperative Observer Program is America's largest weather observation network designed to provide the baseline information for long-term weather and climate analysis. As society's sensitivity to weather has increased new challenges have been placed on this traditional low technology network. To prepare the Cooperative Network for the 21st century, new emphasis has been placed on modernizing communications, instrumentation, and maintaining standards that will keep this long-term data set viable for the future and which provides over 99% of the nation's key stations for the monitoring of climate change. A major effort continues to make more Cooperative observations available daily. Currently, the traditional Remote Observation System Automation (ROSA) continues to be expanded, but other data acquisition methods are also being considered to speed the receipt of data and provide data in more useable formats. Initial requirements and plans move forward to modernize the cooperative network equipment by upgrading the Fischer-Porter rain gauges and designing a new generation maximum/minimum temperature system.
The National Research Council issued a final report in the summer of 1998 on the Cooperative Observer Network. The report provided recommendations in the following areas: 1) the applications of the COOP network; 2) the need to continue the COOP network; 3) assessed the NWS plans to modernize the network, including the impact of interagency data requirements on NOAA's program responsibility for modernizing the COOP network, and 4) identified alternate approaches for improving effectiveness and efficiency of the network through new technology or new organizational structure associated with NWS modernization.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began using snow climatological data this past winter as reference information to evaluate snow events and determine if there was justification for Presidential disaster declarations. These historical snow climatologies were made available in June, 1998, for several thousand COOP locations nationwide. The data included 30 year normals (1961-90), 20-30 year average snowfall, and 10, 25, 50, and 100 year return frequencies for 1, 2, and 3 day snowfalls. To ensure quality snowfall reports, the revised snowfall measurement guidelines for COOP observers have been placed on the Internet which provides a wider distribution of the standards to observers and users