The Integrated Surface Database Recent Developments and Partnerships

NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) initiated the Integrated Surface Database (ISD) project in 1998 to address the problem of scattered climatological data. The goal of the project was to merge several surface hourly datasets into a common format and data model, providing a single collection of global hourly data for the user that was continuously updated and available. Additional benefits of integration included the reduction of subjectivity and inconsistencies among datasets that span multiple observing networks and platforms and standardized quality control (QC) based on reporting time resolution. The result of this effort was a dataset containing data from more than 100 original data sources that collectively archived several meteorological variables. The primary data sources included the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS), Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS), Synoptic, Airways, METAR, Coastal Marine (CMAN), Buoy, and various other kinds of data.