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National Centers for Environmental Information

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National Centers for Environmental Information
Agency overview
Formed2015 (2015)
Preceding agencies
JurisdictionUnited States government
HeadquartersAsheville, North Carolina
EmployeesApproximately 500
Annual budget$71.4 million dollars (2023)
Agency executive
  • Director Derek Arndt
Parent departmentNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) | Department of Commerce (DOC)
Parent agencyNational Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS)
Websitewww.ncei.noaa.gov

The National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), is a United States government agency that manages one of the world's largest archives of atmospheric, coastal, geophysical, and oceanic data. The current director is Deke Arndt.

NCEI is operated by the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which operates under the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In addition to archiving data, NCEI develops products and services that make the data readily available for use by scientists, government officials, the business community, academia, non-governmental organizations, and the general public.

NCEI Mission

NCEI provides environmental data, products, and services covering the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun to drive resilience, prosperity, and equity for current and future generations.

History

NCEI was established by the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2015 Public Law 113-235 in response to increasing demand of r environmental information. The organization was created by merging existing National Data Centers for Weather and Climate, Oceans, Coasts, and Geophysics with the goal of streamlining the collection and preservation of environmental data. NCEI was created in 2015 from the merger of three NOAA data centers:

  1. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)
  2. National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC)
  3. National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC), which includes the National Coastal Data Development Center (NCDDC)

The purpose of this merger was to make NOAA's data more useful through the application of consistent data stewardship practices across all science disciplines. NCEI works with the ISC World Data System to make data free and accessible. NCEI inherited a rich history of data preservation and stewardship from a long line of federal organizations responsible for building the Nation's environmental data network.

Timeline

  • 1951 The Weather Bureau, Air Force, and Navy archives combine to form the National Weather Records Archive. This merger consolidated existing historical weather records and laid the groundwork for future scientific data management practices and infrastructure. The organization was renamed twice, first as the National Climate Center in 1970 then becoming  the National Climatic Data Center in 1982. History of NCDC
  • 1957–58 Scientists around the world participated in the International Geophysical Year, an 18-month period of collaborative research that led to important developments in atmospheric data capture technology, the creation of a permanent Antarctic research station, and other paradigm shifting advances in climate science. These efforts culminated with the creation of the World Data Centers, organizations designed to capture and preserve the data from the project.
  • 1960 The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) was created to help the Navy process its enormous collection of water temperature, wave, current, and depth readings. Faced with a wide variety of data types and mediums, including photographs, coding sheets, and punch cards, NODC staff developed archive practices designed to make oceanographic data easier to organize and more compatible with interdependent scientific archives.
  • 1965 The Department of Commerce created the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) from the Coast and Geodetic Survey and the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory. The NGDC managed the national archive of marine, solar-terrestrial, and geophysical data that didn’t fit neatly into oceanic or atmospheric categories, but were  crucial for identifying and monitoring long-term environmental trends, planning for geomagnetic storm disruptions, and establishing geomagnetic survey baselines.
  • 1970 NOAA was formed from the merger of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Weather Bureau, and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries to improve ocean research, national forecasting, and marine resource stewardship.
  • 1982 The National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) was organized to oversee NOAA data management operations and develop the agency’s emerging satellite information network.

NESDIS Website

  • 2000 The National Coastal Data Development Center (NCDDC) was created at Stennis Space Center, Mississippi as a dedicated hub for building the long-term coastal data record to support environmental prediction, scientific analysis, and formulation of public policy.
  • 2015 NCDC, NCDDC, NGDC, and NODC were consolidated to form NCEI, a unified organization that preserves the strengths, specialties, and institutional relationships of each center while removing structural barriers to data access and improving full earth system science. NCEI remains a part of NESDIS, and continues to work with the World Data System to make datasets and products free and accessible.

Locations

Map of NCEI Locations as of 2017

NCEI is headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina, with other primary locations in Boulder, Colorado; Silver Spring, Maryland; and the Stennis Space Center Mississippi.[1]

NOAA's six Regional Climate Services Directors, which are part of NCEI, represent the Eastern, Central, Southern, Pacific, Western, and Alaska regions. They work with a broad range of partners to provide climate information specific to each region.[2]

Map of NCEI's regional climate center locations and coverage areas

NCEI manages the Regional Climate Center Program,[3] which provides services through six regional offices:

  • High Plains Regional Climate Center (Lincoln, Nebraska)
  • Midwestern Regional Climate Center (Champaign, Illinois)
  • Northeast Regional Climate Center (Ithaca, New York)
  • Southeast Regional Climate Center (Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
  • Southern Regional Climate Center (Baton Rouge, Louisiana)
  • Western Regional Climate Center (Reno, Nevada)

NCEI partners with academic and nonprofit institutions known as cooperative institutes to conduct research and perform tasks that support its mission and goals.[4] The cooperative institutes affiliated with NCEI are as follows:

Data and Services

The graph from a study by NCEI

As of mid-2023, the NCEI archive contained more than 60 petabytes of data with continued exponential growth expected from new observing platforms and technology. This is in addition to a physical archive in a climate-controlled storage facility containing thousands of boxes of data recorded on paper, reels of microfilm, and microfiche.

Information about the past demonstrates the potential to have tremendous positive impacts on our quality of life. Environmental data offer an irreplaceable picture of our atmosphere, land, ocean, seafloor, and space that inform current and future decisions. NOAA and other institutions, organizations, and governments in the U.S. and around the world collect the data that NCEI preserves.

Satellites, land-based stations, ocean buoys, ships, remotely operated underwater vehicles, weather balloons, radar, forecasting and climate models, and paleoclimatological research collect the environmental data. The data and products offer information about climate and weather, coasts, oceans, and geophysics.

Bastion of World Class Research

NCEI Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are sought-after collaborators on national and international research projects. In 2022, they collaborated with scientists from across the globe to produce world-class research. Areas of study were as varied as the environmental data housed at NCEI: hurricanes, drought, ocean warming, fire science, solar flares, artificial intelligence, marine microplastics, and many more.  

In 2022, NCEI SMEs authored more than 90 papers in peer-reviewed journals. That averages to eight papers per month, and NCEI SMEs were the lead authors in 42% of those papers. The papers were published in 56 different scientific journals, including some of the most-cited journals: Scientific Reports, Science of the Total Environment, Nature Climate Change, Nature Communications, and The Astrophysical Journal.

Archiving

An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials - in any medium - or the physical facility in which they are located. NCEI archives today’s information for use by current and future generations. Archiving more precisely involves storing, describing, processing, and providing the data with the ultimate goal of preservation, broad availability, and reuse.

NCEI plays a crucial role in disseminating environmental information and making it accessible to users worldwide. Through its user-friendly online platforms and data portals, individuals and organizations can access a vast array of environmental data, reports, publications, and interactive tools. These resources support a wide range of applications, including climate research, weather forecasting, disaster response planning, resource management, and policy development.

  • NCEI stores data in many ways—digitally on tape robotics systems; the cloud; the hard drives of computer servers; in physical forms, such as paper records in secure, climate-controlled facilities; reel-to-reel film, video; and digital image formats.
  • The organization describes data by telling the story of the data including who, what, where, why, and when it was collected. This is called metadata.
  • Metadata is documentation that describes the kind of artifact or digital record being conserved. It could include a date, a place, a timeframe, a format, a measurement type (℃ or inch, for instance), a geographical location, instrumentation that was used, how it was processed, or the name of the observer. Data is in some instances processed from its raw form so that others can use it more easily, both for today and in the future.
  • Data is then preserved by ensuring it is safely stored in a format that can be used for generations.

Data Comes in Many Forms, From Many Sources

Not only does NOAA manage a wide array of observing systems, including satellites orbiting Earth, but NCEI receives information and datasets through NOAA-funded projects, federal offices, cooperative institutes, and partners from around the globe. To manage this diversity of data, NCEI works closely with our partners across NOAA and the international community to understand, appraise, and prepare data for archiving. All data go through a scientific appraisal and approval process that refers to our Archive Collecting Policy, which defines the data we archive.

How does this information get delivered to NCEI? It depends on what kind of data is submitted. Historically, we have primarily received data through hand-delivered documents or media. More and more, however, data are “ingested” through digital portals, such as Send2NCEI (S2N), or by direct digital delivery via email.

NCEI Data Users

NCEI resources are used for scientific research and commercial applications in many fields, including agriculture, forestry, marine and coastal ecosystems, tourism, transportation, civil infrastructure, energy, transportation, water resources, energy, health, insurance, litigation, and national security.

For example, retail and manufacturing businesses use climate data to assess how weather has influenced past sales so they can better plan for the future. Corn farmers rely on NCEI data to decide how much fertilizer to apply. The reinsurance industry—which offers insurance to insurance companies—uses NCEI data to determine risks associated with natural disasters. Cattle ranchers use NCEI’s weekly U.S. Drought Monitor to make decisions about land management, herd size, and feed purchases. The freight railway industry uses a number of NCEI products—including Local Climatological Data, Integrated Surface Daily Database, and Global Historical Climatology Network—to predict where tracks might be blocked by landslides and to help trains avoid the path of severe storms. U.S. fishing boats use NCEI ocean and coastal data to determine where fishing conditions are most promising. The third-party weather service industry uses NCEI data to create customized forecasts and other tools to serve a wide range of clients, such as transportation companies seeking to build facilities where fog or snow is less likely to create problems. NCEI effectively manages a vast array of environmental data.

See also

References

  1. ^ "NCEI Locations". NCEI. Retrieved October 24, 2020.
  2. ^ "Regional Climate Services Directors". NCEI. Retrieved October 23, 2020.
  3. ^ "Regional Climate Centers". NCEI. Retrieved October 23, 2020.
  4. ^ "NCEI's Cooperative Institutes: Partners in Science". NCEI. Retrieved October 23, 2020.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Centers_for_Environmental_Information&oldid=1167619397"