NOAA's Climate Database Modernization Program - Rescuing, archiving, and digitizing history

Commenced in 2000, the Climate Database Modernization Program (CDMP) managed by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is a joint effort of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) personnel and private sector. This program that costs multi-million dollar has been focusing on imaging and keying climate and environmental records worldwide back from the 18th up to present and has created jobs in various sectors of the national economy, as well. All the data images recovered have been scanned by CDMP contractors to ensure the best image quality followed by indexing. CDMP has developed an online system called Web Search Store Retrieve Display (WSSRD ®) where all the indexed images and other keyed data is processed via existing control and quality assessment routines at NCDC are made available. The keying of data and digital preservation of the historic records provided researchers and data users to understand the climate variability and changes.