With easy access to data, researchers can study the effects of various weather parameters on the environment which in turn have an effect on the economy, etc. The goal of this project was to provide the easiest access, at the lowest cost, for researchers to obtain data. The NCDC used their Science Advisory Panel, researcher feedback, literature and journal reviews, and attendance at conferences and meetings to determine the national and global data sets that researchers wanted to have available on-line. The data sets were put into priority by their importance to scientific research and placed on-line as resources became available. Long term climatological global and national data sets were made available on-line for easy access.
Data are quality controlled before placement on-line.
The NCDC system is linked to UCAR's on-line system to permit researchers to obtain National Weather Service operational and UCAR's research data from one system. This project permitted NCDC and UCAR's Office of Field Project Support to have data on-line for easy researcher access. The system also placed on-line valuable information about the data, i.e. inventories and data set descriptions. The system allows the user to immediately download data, computer to computer, or order the data for off-line shipment. The data are available via magnetic tape, floppy disk, or paper copy.