NOAA NCEI nClimDiv Climate at a Glance

This dataset consists of the US summary data behind the Climate at a Glance portal, maintained by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) at NOAA, which provides a time series of basic climate data at the climate division, state, and county levels.<br><br>The data is derived from the U.S. Climate Divisional Database (nClimDiv) and provides monthly summary data from 1895 to present for the continental US, and for shorter time periods for Alaska and Hawaii. Variables include minimum, maximum, and mean temperature and precipitation for divisions, states and counties. Drought indexes and normals are also available for divisions and states, and there is an inventory of weather stations by division. The summaries were generated from a dataset known as nClimGrid, which is based on the GHCN dataset and is the foundational dataset for studying climate across larger geographic areas. <br><br>Documentation files are included, and provide details on methodology as well as descriptions for interpreting file names which incorporate: name of the dataset, variable, geography, version number, and date of the most recent observation. The data are stored in fixed-width text files which can be parsed and loaded into statistical packages, scripting languages, and spreadsheets. The documentation includes a codebook that can be used for parsing the fields based on their length.<br><br>GIS data in a shapefile format is also included, and depicts the boundaries of climate divisions in the continental US, Alaska, and Hawaii.<br><br>