The NOAA Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) is a citizen weather observer network run by the U.S.

National Weather Service The National Weather Service (NWS) is an Government agency, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weathe ...

(NWS) and National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). Over 8,700 volunteers from the fifty states and all

territories A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or a ...

report at least daily a variety of

weather Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmosphere, the ...

conditions such as daily maximum and minimum

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various temperature scales that historically have relied o ...

s, 24-hour

precipitation In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravitational pull from clouds. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, ice pellets, graupel and hail. ...

totals, including

snow Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout ...

fall, and significant weather occurrences throughout a day that are recorded via remarks in observer logs. Some stations also report stream stage or tidal levels. 2013-10-14 12 33 44 National Weather Service Cooperative Observer site

2013-10-14 12 33 44 National Weather Service Cooperative Observer site

Daily observations are reported electronically or over the phone, and monthly logs are submitted electronically or via the mail. Many stations are located in rural areas but the network also includes long-term stations in most urban centers. Observation locations include farms, in urban and suburban areas, National Parks, seashores, and mountaintops. Volunteers are trained by local NWS offices who provide

rain gauge A rain gauge (also known as udometer, pluvia metior, pluviometer, ombrometer, and hyetometer) is an instrument used by meteorologists and hydrologists to gather and measure the amount of liquid precipitation over a predefined area, over a period o ...

s, snowsticks,

thermometer A thermometer is a device that temperature measurement, measures temperature or a temperature gradient (the degree of hotness or coldness of an object). A thermometer has two important elements: (1) a temperature sensor (e.g. the bulb of a merc ...

s, or other

instruments Instrument may refer to: Science and technology * Flight instruments, the devices used to measure the speed, altitude, and pertinent flight angles of various kinds of aircraft * Laboratory equipment, the measuring tools used in a scientific lab ...

. Data is initially received and analyzed by local NWS offices then ultimately stored and analyzed by NCEI, which also does final

data quality Data quality refers to the state of qualitative or quantitative pieces of information. There are many definitions of data quality, but data is generally considered high quality if it is "fit for tsintended uses in operations, decision making and ...

checks. The program began with act of Congress in 1890 and grew out a network of observers developed by the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. It was a backbone of the U.S. climatological observation network and remains an important network in providing long-term observations of particular locations. The Cooperative Weather Observer network consists of manual observations of only a few variables and consists of daily summaries rather than being continuous (i.e. real-time). Because of these limitations and other sensor limitations, as well as to attain a denser network of observations, there has been a move to supplement the coop program using

automated weather station An automatic weather station (AWS) is an automated version of the traditional weather station, either to save human labour or to enable measurements from remote areas. An AWS will typically consist of a weather-proof enclosure containing the data ...

s since the 1990s. NWS sponsored programs include the

Citizen Weather Observer Program The Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) is a network of privately owned electronic weather stations concentrated in the United States but also located in over 150 countries. Network participation allows volunteers with computerized weather sta ...

(CWOP) and

Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS, is a network of volunteer weather observers in the United States, Canada, and the Bahamas that take daily readings of precipitation and report them to a central data store over ...

(CoCoRaHS). The coop network predates but grew to supplement significant surface weather observation sites typically located around major airports.

Mesonet In meteorology and climatology, a mesonet, portmanteau of mesoscale network, is a network of automated weather and, often, environmental monitoring stations designed to observe mesoscale meteorological phenomena and/or microclimates. Dry lin ...

s also supplement these major

weather station A weather station is a facility, either on land or sea, with instruments and equipment for measuring atmospheric conditions to provide information for weather forecasts and to study the weather and climate. The measurements taken include tempera ...

s and may be official or unofficial, possess varying degrees of rigor, may be temporary or used for specific

research project Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness t ...

goals, and some (typically for temporary research projects) are even mobile.

References

External links

NWS National Cooperative Observer Program
(NWS)
Cooperative Observer Network
(NCEI)
Cooperative Observer's Network Observation Forms
(Climate.gov)
Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) Training Materials
(NWS Chief Learning Office) {{Earth-based meteorological observation National Weather Service Meteorological data and networks Citizen science

See also

References

External links