The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has the statutory mandate to collect hydrographic data in support of nautical chart compilation for safe navigation and to provide background data for engineers, scientific, and other commercial and industrial activities. Hydrographic survey data primarily consist of water depths, but may also include features (e.g. rocks, wrecks), navigation aids, shoreline identification, and bottom type information.
NOAA is responsible for archiving and distributing the source data as described in this metadata record.

Publication of monthly mean temperature, pressure, precipitation, vapor pressure, and hours of sunshine for approximately 2,000 surface data collection stations worldwide, and monthly mean upper air temperatures, dew point depressions, and wind velocities for approximately 500 observing sites.

The Reference Climatological Stations (RCS) network represents the first effort by NOAA to create and maintain a nationwide network of stations located only in areas where no changes in the surroundings are foreseen. Efforts to establish the network began in 1954 by the National Weather Service. The network became operational in 1966 with the selection of fifteen stations from a list of 28 candidate sites; six more were added as the network expanded. Most stations were located at university agricultural experiment stations.

A meteorological data system was designed, assembled, and installed to obtain, on a continuous basis, wind and temperature information at 12 levels on a television transmitting tower 1434 ft in height. Measurement and recording of atmospheric variables was accomplished entirely automatically, the output being in the form of punched paper tape and a record prepared by an electric typewriter.

Digitized data taken from Wind Gust Charts. Record contains hourly wind directions and speed with a peak wind recorded at the end of each day. Sorted by: station, year, month, day, hour. Overview: Standard text files with a 80 character record length. Year, month, and day are stored in separate 2 character fields

Digitized data taken from original weather observations taken at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station, Florida. Elements recorded are wind speed and direction, wind speed minimum, mean, and maximum, temperature, delta temperature between levels, pressure, radiation, dew point, precipitation, stability index and precipitable water, and vertical winds. Observations were taken simultaneously at nine levels, using instrumentation mounted on two towers: Tower 1 (18m tall): 3m, 10m, 18m Tower 2 (150m tall): 18m, 30m, 60m, 90m, 120m, 150m

Digitized data taken from original weather observations taken at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station, Florida. Elements recorded are wind speed and direction, temperature, dew point, pressure, and possibly more. Observations were taken every three hours. Records are contained in standard 80 character record lengths. The reference manual to indicate the individual fields and their lengths has not been found. It is possible to identify most of the fields, but some, particularly later in the record, have not been identified.

Cape Kennedy Thunderstorms Data contains an account of all thunderstorms reported in weather observations taken at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station, Florida between 1957 and 1972. Elements recorded include date and time thunderstorm began and ended, quadrant(s) in which the storm was first and last observed, direction of movement, intensity, frequency of thunder, presence of more than one storm, lightning characteristics and intensity. Wind speed (sustained and gusts), wind shift, pressure tendency, and minimum ceiling hight and visibility are also included.

This Summary of the Day data file contains daily selected elements of observations recorded by certified observers. The stations were located in the U.S. and were operated by the United States Weather Bureau (later the National Weather Service) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This data file spans 1945-1948. These first and second order stations were usually fully instrumented and therefore recorded a complete range of meteorological parameters. The observations were generally recorded for the 24-HR period midnight to midnight.

The dataset consists primarily of U.S. surface airways observations (SAO) data beginning in 1965 and extending through 1981.

Note that a few stations have already had certain years within this 1965-81 period re-keyed as hourly. For these stations, only a subset of the period was keyed. In addition, other stations did not have data keyed at all during this period, or during the periods immediately before or after the 1965-81 range. These stations data have been keyed to as thoroughly as possible complete their entire period of record back to July, 1948.