Natural Resource Inventory and Monitoring, Climate Inventory

Natural Resource Inventory and Monitoring, Climate Inventory.

One of the 12 natural resource inventories, the primary objective of the Climate Inventory is to obtain park-relevant baseline climate data useful to NPS biologists, hydrologists and resource managers. Information on climate has been compiled via the inventories of climate observations stations relevant to parks; the acquisition of historical climate data; and development of tools that facilitate acquisition, processing, evaluation, and reporting of weather and climate data. The inventory of climate stations within and adjacent to NPS units has been published in 32 Inventory and Monitoring Network-specific reports. These reports include information on regional climate drivers, monitoring station locations, data provenance, measurements, periods of record, and other station metadata. An initial acquistion of a static climate data set for this inventory (PRISM data) was eventually superseded by multiple on-line data sources that are kept up-to-date and provide a variety on visualization and download capabilities. Climate inventory data needed by NPS is currently managed and stored by outside organizations that specialize in managing climate inventory data. The Inventory and Monitoring Program has developed a series of standard operating procedures (SOPs) for acquiring and analyzing data from many of these authoritative sources, along with a stable repository for climate data requested by NPS uses. This provides a means to access, manage, and use these data in a single and consistent format, and avert duplications of effort.

Type
Program
Authors
NPS Inventory & Monitoring Program
Units
CLI , NRIM
Keywords
Climate, Inventory, NCDC, raws, snotel, WRCC

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