Availability of Meteorological Data

Surface Meteorological Data:

For dispersion modeling, we have on hand here in Billings the Integrated Surface Hourly Observations (ISH) data sets for 1995-2008. These are published on DVD annually by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). ISH data are directly usable without modification in AERMET; for CALMET, they must be converted to one of CALMET's supported formats. I've written a little utility to convert ISH formatted data to CD144 formatted data, which CALMET can read.

For wind erosion calculations, we can obtain Local Climatological Data (LCD) for any of several hundred locations nationwide. The LCD data sets include the 3-second or 5-second wind speed data needed for the wind erosion calculations. These data are available by subscription for $29 annually per station from here:

https://nes.ncdc.noaa.gov/sub-login.html

We already subscribe to a number of stations in Montana. The LCD data can also be used for modeling, but they must be converted to a format supported by the model. I've written a little utility to convert LCD data to CD144 format, which can be used by both AERMET and CALMET.

Upper Air Meteorological Data

Radiosonde data are available at no cost from here:

http://esrl.noaa.gov/raobs/

When you download the data, be sure to select the "Original FSL format (ASCII text)" option, as AERMET and CALMET do not support the new FSL format.

ALSO....

WebMET (offered through Lakes Environmental) provides easy access to surface and upper air data. It also provides station information such as anemometer height, time zone (+ x zones relative to GMT), and lat/long. (Note: this was the only place I was able to find anemometer height info.)
(added 5/19/2011, KMM)