Monthly Climatic Data for the World

Monthly Climatic Data for the World (MCDW) is available as a publication and also as a digital dataset (DSI-3500), both of which contain the same data. The geographic coverage is selected stations in most nations that are members of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) -- in effect, global. MCDW is prepared in cooperation with the WMO. NCEI processes international electronic transmissions in CLIMAT format (surface land station), CLIMAT SHIP format (ocean ship) and CLIMAT TEMP format (upper air), for the purpose of building a surface/upper air data base and producing MCDW. Approximately 1200 surface and 500 upper air stations are processed. These data are used in agricultural and energy assessment activities, in crop yield model development, and in the analysis of global atmospheric and regional climatic variations. The major parameters in MCDW are monthly mean station pressure, sea level pressure, and vapor pressure with departure from normal, mean temperature with departure from normal, total precipitation with departure from normal, percentage of long-term average sunshine, and upper air data such as height, temperature, dew point temperature depression, vector wind direction and speed with the steadiness factor for the surface and constant pressure levels of 850, 700, 500, 300, 200, 150, 100, 50, and 30 mb. The publication began in 1948. The digital dataset DSI-3500 contains data from 1986 to the present. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) produces important derived datasets DSI-9645 and DSI- 9648, which combine MCDW data and data from other sources, from as long ago as 1731. These are also available from NCEI.