Research Guides: Geography Research Guide: Climate and Environmental Data

General U.S. Data

Community Resilience Estimates (2022) - Census Bureau
New ranking tables of U.S. areas most socially vulnerable to winter weather and flooding.
Community resilience is the capacity of individuals and households within a community to absorb the external stresses of a disaster.
USGS GIS Data and Tools
National Centers for Environmental Information Data Access (NOAA)
Land-based, marine, model, radar, weather balloon, satellite, and paleoclimatic are just a few of the types of datasets available.
Storm Events Database
contains data from January 1950 to October 2018, as entered by NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS)
National Snow and Ice Data Center
Datasets on the Earth's cryosphere, including permafrost, soil moisture, brightness temperature and more. Includes raw data, maps, and satellite images
USGS National Water Information Service
EPA National Air Quality
Status and Trends of key air pollutants
National Oceanographic Data Center
Data sets from salinity to surface water temperature.
United States Drought Monitor
Time series, tabular data, GIS data, and metadata.
OnTheMap for Emergency Management
Public data tool that provides an intuitive web-based interface for accessing U.S. population and workforce statistics, in real time, for areas being affected by natural disasters.

International

DataONE Dataset Search
Access to data across multiple member repositories, supporting enhanced search and discovery of Earth and environmental data.
OECD Environment Data
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
CAIT Climate Data Explorer (at World Resources Institute)
Provides free access to comparable greenhouse gas emissions data sets, as well as other climate-relevant indicators, to enable analysis on a wide range of climate-related data questions.
Monthly Climatic Data for the World
contains 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.

Data Repositories

National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR): Community Data Portal This link opens in a new window
Collection of earth science datasets from participating international and national organizations. Find data sets in categories from climate and weather to polar data.
IRI/LDEO Climate Data Library
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The Data Catalog was developed by the Climate Group at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. The data library helps you find data and work with it. The interface allows you to make plots, tables, and files from any dataset.
Environmental Data Explorer (United Nations Environment Programme)
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Compilation of climate data. Datasets contain variables from temperature to CO2 emissions.
Goddard Earth Sciences: Data Information and Services Center This link opens in a new window
The GES DISC is home to the data archive of NASA Precipitation and Hydrology, as well as Atmospheric Composition and Dynamics remote sensing data and information. The site also houses the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) data products.
Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
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The site provides access to oceanographic and atmospheric datasets. The datasets include Atlantic Expendable Bathythermograph, Global Lagrangian Drifting Buoy, Hurricane Flight Level, and Atlantic Hurricane Tracks (North Atlantic Best Track and Synoptic). Other available datasets include Pacific Conductivitiy/Temperature/Depth Recorder (CTD) and World Ocean Atlas 1998.

Springer Nature Scientific Data Repositories

Geography Research Guide

Help finding data

Data Sources

General U.S. Data

International

Data Repositories