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Station Histories

NCEI Station Histories provide essential metadata about land-based weather stations in the U.S. and around the world. Histories are available for NCEI datasets that cover hourly, monthly, and daily time resolutions for land stations. These data are only as good as the quality of our station histories, which explain where and under what circumstances the observations were taken.

Historical Observing Metadata Repository (HOMR)

The Historical Observing Metadata Repository (HOMR) is an integrated station history database that provides land-based station metadata in support of research, reporting, data products, and web applications. HOMR tracks historical names, identifiers, locations, and equipment for stations located throughout the world.

HOMR currently provides station histories for GHCN Daily and Monthly datasets, along with many other land based networks listed under Current Holdings. Use the ISD Inventory to access hourly station location metadata.

Search Tool

The HOMR search tool provides access to detailed histories for stations whose data are archived at NCEI. You can search for these stations by a variety of criteria, display summary information for stations matching those criteria, and drill down for more detailed information about each individual station.

Search Metadata

Station History Reports

NCEI generates standard flat-file reports and kmz files using the station history database. These reports provide historical information on every station in the database, and station lists with basic information for various observing networks. U.S. sites like those in the National Weather Service National Weather Service (NWS) Cooperative Observer Program have the most extensive historical information in HOMR.

Access Reports

HOMR Web Service API

HOMR provides a web service that you can use to get station metadata in JSON format.

API Documentation

Hourly Station Location Metadata

The Integrated Surface Data (ISD) dataset consists of global hourly and synoptic observations compiled from numerous sources, into a single common format and data model. The list and inventories below provide information on the stations and volume of data available in the ISD.

ISD Station List

Identification numbers and location information for each station in the ISD.

Station List

ISD Inventory

This inventory provides the number of hourly observations available for each year and month by station in the ISD.