Contacts:
Ron Kalb, DRI Director of Public Information ron.kalb@dri.edu
Las Vegas (702) 862-5420
Laura Edwards, DRI Asst. Research Climatologist
laura.edwards@dri.edu
775-674-7163 (office)
All DRI News Releases available at: http://news.dri.edu/
June 9, 2004
Golden State’s climate data goes online today thanks to Web site project sponsored by Nevada’s Desert Research Institute, Scripps Institution, Calif. Energy Commission
RENO, Nev./SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Public access to California climate data for research and government use is only a few clicks away at a new Web site launched today. The new CalClim California Climate Data Archive, or CCDA, will be presented at the inaugural Climate Change Conference in Sacramento, Calif., sponsored by the California Energy Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research Program.
The climate data site can be accessed at www.calclim.dri.edu.
The CalClim project is co-sponsored by the Desert Research Institute’s Western Regional Climate Center and Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s California Climate Change Center, which is funded by the California Energy Commission. CalClim aims to make information available in a usable format and timely manner for the purpose of climate monitoring in California. Resources currently online include daily climate data available for download; summarized data; California Climate Watch, a monthly monitoring newsletter; and climate maps updated daily.
Future efforts will be made to identify key stations with long records and relatively high quality sampling characteristics to use as baseline references in monitoring climate variability and change in the California region.
The CCDA provides access to climate products and data download capabilities and will grow over the coming months. The first dataset made available is the daily National Weather Service Cooperative, or COOP. This network includes volunteer observers across the state as well as airports and other automated sites. In California alone, more than 500 active stations participate in the COOP network.
Numerous climate products for each COOP station are also available online, including monthly and daily average temperature and precipitation, daily extremes and records and station metadata.
Other observation networks featured in CCDA include Remote Automated Weather Stations, or RAWS, Snowpack Telemetry, or SNOTEL, and California Irrigation Management Information System, or CIMIS. Currently the CCDA Web site has links to climate products for several of these stations. Data download capabilities are planned in the coming months to include these additional datasets on daily and shorter timescales.
California Climate Watch is a monthly online newsletter produced in conjunction with the CCDA. Each edition features a highlight story on current research in climate monitoring or change, a monthly weather summary and data for a subset of COOP stations. Climate forecasts, drought and El Niño/La Niña outlooks and climate maps aid in presenting the state of the climate each month.
DRI’s Laura Edwards designed the CCDA website and is the editor of California Climate Watch.
“We hope this Web site offers a selection of information and products that appeal to a varied audience,” Edwards said. “We want to attract everyone from climatologists and university researchers to the average citizen who just wants to learn about climate in California.”
Other CalClim projects underway include a collaboration with Scripps to develop an enhanced climate monitoring network and a data archive targeting coastal areas.
For more information about CalClim and the CCDA, visit http://www.calclim.dri.edu.
A nonprofit, statewide division of the University and Community College System of Nevada, DRI pursues a full-time program of basic and applied environmental research on a local, national, and international scale. Nearly 400 full- and part-time scientists, technicians, and support staff conduct some 150 research projects at DRI annually. More than 80 percent of DRI's annual $37 million operating budget consists of research grants and contracts obtained by its scientists. The balance is received from the state of Nevada for administrative costs.