National Centers for Environmental Information


The United States National Centers for Environmental Information, headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina, is the world's largest active archive of environmental data. In 2015 it was established from the merger of the National Climatic Data Center, the National Geophysical Data Center and the National Oceanographic Data Center. The current director is Mary Wohlgemuth.
NCEI is a component of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration within the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Merger

The establishment of NCEI was rooted in the dramatic increase in the demand for environmental data and information in the years preceding 2015. In order to meet the demand, the three existing data centers are merged in accordance with the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, Public Law 113-235:
  1. National Climatic Data Center
  2. National Geophysical Data Center
  3. National Oceanographic Data Center, which includes the National Coastal Data Development Center
NCEI was launched on April 22, 2015. The transition is expected to finish beyond 2020, while at the meantime none of the existing products and services will be affected by the merger. Existing URLs, links and domain names for the data centers will remain accessible, even though a plan will be developed to consolidate the domains, also any change will be advertised and appropriate redirects will be created.

Archived data

NCEI hosts and provides access to over 20 petabytes of comprehensive atmospheric, coastal, oceanic, and geophysical digital data e.g. ocean depth information, sun surface data, million-year-old sediment records and near real-time satellite images.

Regional Climate Center Program

NCEI funds six regional climate centers in the United States, designed to provide enhanced services to sectors within their covered regions. The individual climate centers develop their own tools and services to assist partners and decision makers. The six regional climate centers are: