Monthly Climatic Data for the World (MCDW) states in its description that “[M]onthly issues contain monthly mean temperature, pressure, precipitation, vapor pressure, and 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”. One has to remember though, that not all of this data has always been collected. Data collection standards have changed over the years, as well as statistical requirements of reporting stations. Keeping that caveat in mind, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has done an impressive job with providing access to its climatic data for the world from its earliest reports to its recent publications. All reports are scanned versions of the original publication available in portable document format (PDF). Any report from May of 1948 until March of 2004 can be accessed, viewed, printed or saved to disk for later viewing.
On the opening page for MCDW on the left‐hand side of the web page there are three links that serve as shortcuts to information further down the main page. The first link leads to a description of the resource. The second leads to a sample MCDW report and a notice that states, “earlier releases [reports from earlier years] may include a slightly different format and mix of data than this example publication”. The third link takes the user to a notice that states the user must have an Adobe Acrobat reader to be able to view the reports and includes a link to Adobe Acrobat if the user needs it. Also to the left and above the links is an authentication notice which lets the user know if his access is free (NCDC provides free access to academic institutions).
To access reports from MCDW, the user selects one of the monthly reports listed in the Select Publication box in the centre of the opening screen. The user simply chooses the report(s) they would like to access by highlighting it and clicking on the Next button. When a request is initiated, a page appears notifying the user that the requested report is being retrieved and that patience in retrieving the file is appreciated. This is a very helpful message because depending on the size of the report and speed of traffic on the internet, links can be generated in 30 seconds or may take as long as one to two minutes.
Instead of a link back to the MCDW web page, the NCDC uses what are referred to as “breadcrumbs” to allow the user to go back to the previous page. The user clicks on the link that matches the page they wish to view. In the case of MCDW, they take the user back to the Serial Publications page that shows the user that there are other data reports available.
When the link is generated, a page appears with the link to the Adobe Acrobat file. The user is told to bookmark or save the document so that it can be accessed more quickly in the future. This notice indicates that NCDC recognizes that reports sometimes take a little more time to generate than some people think they should. However, considering the size of the files and, more importantly, the variable speed of the internet at various times of the day, reports requested came back in what I considered to be a timely fashion. Those who need quick and repeated access to a specific report or group of reports repeatedly should download the reports onto their machines or onto an available portable medium such as a Zip disk or a CD or DVD.
Monthly Climatic Data for the World is an important resource for those looking for weather data, especially since most of it cannot be found anywhere else in electronic format. The user should keep in mind that it is better to save or bookmark reports that are going to be used repeatedly. This will save the time it takes to create the PDF link every time a new report is requested. For researchers or just someone interested in weather data, NCDC's Monthly Climatic Data for the World will be a treasure trove of weather information.
