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The Natural Hazards Data Resources Directory has been made available online by NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center with funding from the Institute for Business and Home Safety.

The following organization provides Meteorological data and information.

Oklahoma Climatological Survey

Dr. Kenneth C. Crawford, Director
Oklahoma Climatological Survey
The University of Oklahoma
100 East Boyd Street, Suite 1210
Norman, OK 73019-1012
Contact Person: Howard Johnson, Assistant State Climatologist
Telephone: (405) 325-2541
Fax: (405) 325-2550
Email: ocs@ou.edu
Website: http://www.ocs.ou.edu

The Oklahoma Climatological Survey (OCS) is a research unit of the University of Oklahoma which has served since 1982 as support to the State Climatologist, an office filled by the director of the OCS.

Under its legislative mandate, the primary duties of OCS in supporting the Oklahoma Drought Management Plan are to "acquire, archive, process, and disseminate ... all climate and weather information which is or could be of value to policy and decision makers in the state." OCS meets these obligations through two main venues:

1) OCS operates the Oklahoma Mesonet, a unique 114-station environmental monitoring system that measures standard atmospheric variables such as temperature, humidity, wind, air pressure, and solar radiation; measures rainfall; and provides measurements of soil temperature and (at some sites) soil moisture. The soil moisture data stream was experimental and was being evaluated as of July 1998, but it was expected to become routinely available to the concerned state agencies as of August 1998. Five-minute averages of atmospheric variables, accumulated rainfall, and 15-minute averages of soil temperatures are collected electronically from each station around the clock. Data are processed, checked for consistency, and disseminated to subscribers, usually within 20 minutes of the end of the averaging period. Soil moisture data are collected at 30 minute intervals. All data are archived at OCS. Data summaries and models based on Mesonet data, including the Oklahoma Precipitation Update and the Oklahoma Fire Danger Model, are freely available on the OCS website. Archived data may be purchased from OCS.

2) Through the cooperation of regional offices of the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Climatic Data Center, OCS maintains a complete file of temperature and precipitation reports from the network of cooperative observers assembled by NWS. Copies of each Oklahoma observer sheet are provided to OCS and these data are appended to the historical data sets. Normal and historical extreme temperature and precipitation values are derived from the data provided by this network. OCS prepares and distributes a monthly summary of data from NWS cooperative stations within the state.

For information concerning the Natural Hazards listed here, please contact the individual organizations directly.

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