Skip to Main Content

Environmental Economics

Weather Data - International

 

Climate Change Knowledge Portal: Historical Data.  Contains historical temperature and precipitation data aggregated from 2-degree gridded data to the country and subnational levels for the period covering 1901-2020. Click on the time series tab. For the USA, weather is to the state level.

Sage Data 
Includes data from the World Resources Institute (discontinued), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (weather data), and the Environmental Protection Agency (air quality).

FaoStat has median monthly temperature change by country back to 1961.

Climate Data Online.  Provides surface and upper air data for the United States and select international weather stations in some cases back to the 1800s.  See their FTP site to do large downloads. Also see the Image and Publication System.

World Data Center for Meteorology.  Portal to weather data from a variety of sources.

Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature.  Includes over 39,000 unique weather stations.   Combined 1.6 billion temperature reports from 15 preexisting data archives.

WorldClim - Global Climate Data.  Provides historical and current climate data and includes forecasts.

NASA Earth Exchange Global Daily Downscaled Projections (NEX-GDDP).   Each of the climate projections includes daily maximum temperature, minimum temperature, and precipitation for the periods from 1950 through 2100.

World Meteorological Organization Standard Normals. Provides the basis for better understanding the climatology of severe weather and extreme events such as tropical cyclones, El Niño, floods, heat waves, cold waves, droughts and other natural hazards, contributing to saving both lives and property, and improving our understanding and monitoring of the climate system and environment. WMO has drawn attention to issues of major concern, such as ozone layer depletion, global warming, climate change and diminishing water resources.  WMO defines climatological standard normals as "averages of climatological data computed for the following consecutive periods of 30 years: January 1, 1901 to December 31, 1930, January 1, 1931 to December 31, 1960, etc." (WMO, 1984). The latest global standard normals period is 1961-1990. The next standard normals period is January 1991 – December 2020.

GHCN Global Climate. Contains long-term, monthly time series of 4 basic climatic parameters: mean temperature, total precipitation, mean sea level pressure, and mean station pressure for Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. Also contained in Sage Data. Browse under National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as the source.

National Snow and Ice Data Center.

International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) offers surface marine covering 1662+.

International Surface Pressure Data Bank.  World's largest collection of pressure observations. 
Consists of 3 components: station observations, marine observations, and tropical cyclone best track pressure reports.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Distributed Active Archive Center. Climate Data Sets.
Long term data on temperature, precipitation, humidity, radiation, wind velocity, and cloud cover. These data are monthly and are either station or gridded data.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Distributed Active Archive Center. Climate Data Sets.
Long term data on data on streamflow and climatology. The data are from a range of time scales (daily and monthly) and are from meteorological stations or streamflow discharge stations.

Arctic Report Card.  Issued annually since 2006. Timely and peer-reviewed source for clear, reliable and concise environmental information on the current state of the Arctic relative to historical records.

Bering Climate.  A current view of the Bering Sea ecosystem and climate.

El Niño / Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (National Weather Service - Climate Prediction Center)

Sea Level Trends
NOAA.  Provides sea levels by place historically.  Dates differ but in some cases back a century.

Weather Data - USA

In addition to some of the international weather sources on the left, the following provides weather data for the USA:

NOAA Climate data by county.  1895+

National Neighborhood Data Archive (NaNDA): Weather by County, United States, 2003-2016 These datasets contain measures of weather by county in the United States for the years 2003-2016. Measures include average daily temperature, freezing days, cold days, hot days, rainy days, and snowy days.

 

Climate at a Glance.  Statewide time series for temperatures, precipitation, cooling and heating degree days, and droughts. 

CDC WonderProvides daily air temperature and heat indexes (1979+), land surface temperatures (2003+), fine particulate matter (2003+), sunlight (1979+), and precipitation by state (1979+).

Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin Provides information on weather, climate and agricultural developments worldwide, along with detailed charts and tables of agrometeorological information that are appropriate for the season. (1971+)  Forecasts are provided for areas outside the United States.

Air Data; Air Quality Data Collected at Outdoor Monitors across the US

Weather America : a thirty-year summary of statistical weather data and rankings. 3rd ed. Amenia, NY: Grey House Publishing, 2011.  (DSS), QC983.W385 2011 (older editions in Firestone and Lewis Library)

Sea Level Trends
NOAA.  Provides sea levels by place historically.  Dates differ but in some cases back a century.  Also see the Sea Level Rise Viewer.

UV Index.  (NOAA) Ultraviolet index data by city back to 1994.

Global daily summary: temperature and precipitation, 1977-1991. 
National Climatic Data Center.  CD-ROM provides meteorological data from WMO weather observations. Lewis Library: Multimedia C 55.281/2:977-91.

Climate atlas of the United States.  Asheville, N.C. : U.S. Dept. of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Climatic Data Center, 2002.  CD-ROM contains Version 2 of Climate atlas of U.S. which features climate maps of all 50 states. It contains 2023 color maps of climatic elements such as temperature, precipitation, etc., to portray climate of U.S. for period 1961-1990.
Lewis Library:  Multimedia C 55.281/2-2:C 61/CD/2002

There are also many compilations.  Check the Catalog under the subject United States--Climate.

Examples include >

Decennial census of United States climate [1960] Monthly normals of temperature, precipitation, and heating degree days [by state]  Firestone QC983.xU51

Decennial census of United States climate. Daily normals of temperature and heating degree days.  Firestone QC983.xU8

Climatic summary of the United States.  Annex B, Fine Hall. 85101.9235 (Princeton has 1-45 (1931/1952) ; 1-45 (1951/1960))

Weather Data - Australia

In addition to some of the international weather sources on the left, the following provides weather data for Australia:

Australian Government. Bureau of Meteorology.  Climate Data Online. Daily and monthly current and historical rainfall, temperature, and solar exposure data for each weather station in Australia.

Weather Data - China

In addition to some of the international weather sources on the left, the following provides weather data for China:

China Meteorological Data Sharing Service System. Requires free registration.

TuTiempo.net (Climate China - Historical Weather Records)