Marine Data

About Marine Data

Surface Marine observations contain various meteorological elements that over time can describe the nature of the climate of a location or region. These elements include temperature, dew point, relative humidity, precipitation, snowfall, snow depth on ground, wind speed, wind direction, cloudiness, visibility, atmospheric pressure, evaporation, soil temperatures, and various types of weather occurrences such as hail, fog, thunder, glaze, etc. NCDC receives and archives meteorological data from ships at sea as well as buoys both fixed and free floating. The weather observations are normally hourly observations (can be more frequent) and there are daily and monthly summaries. Many of the summaries are published on paper, electronically and via CD-ROM. Surface Marine data from around the world are archived at NCDC.

Marine Data Products

ICOADS: The International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set Project

• ICOADS
  (The historical surface marine record, presently covering more than 200 years, is maintained through the ICOADS project.)
  
• ICOADS Data Access
  

Buoy Data

Temperature, salinity, wind speed, and other meteorological data from a network of worldwide buoys.

• Global Buoy Data, Summary of Day--Select by Buoy
  (1994 - present, click on ocean basin for station list, all elements *)
• ICOADS Buoy Data Access
  
• NDBC Data Access
  

Global Observing Ship Data

Meteorological data from the volunteer ship observing network.

• VOSClim (Voluntary Observing Ship Climate Project) Home Page
  (Marine data and metadata access)
• VOSClim Data Access
  

Paleoclimate data

• World Data Center for Paleoclimatology
  (Paleoclimatology is the study of climate prior to the widespread availability of records of temperature, precipitation and other instrumental data.)

Dataset Documentation

• Dataset Documentation (Marine Dataset Documentation)

Research and Monitoring

Contact

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Contact information