Abstract:
Climate Atlas of the United States is a product offered by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Climate Atlas of the United States CD-ROM Versions 1.0 and 2.0 are the previous and current editions of a digital product available from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Version 1.0, which is still available, consists of data from only the 48 contiguous U.S. states in North America.
... Version 2.0 features climate maps of all 50 states. It replaces a popular paper Atlas last published in 1968, and supersedes version 1.0. The new CD Atlas contains 2023 color maps of climatic elements such as temperature, precipitation, snow, wind, pressure, etc., chosen to portray the climate of the US. The period of record of the data for most of the maps is 1961-1990. The user may install the Atlas onto a local drive, or run the Atlas from the CD. From the Atlas interface, the user chooses an element type (Temperature, or Precipitation, or Snow, etc.), an element (mean, or maximum, or record extreme, etc.), and a geographic area (Lower 48, Alaska, or Hawaii). The Atlas displays maps of the selected element and area using ESRI's ArcExplorer, which is included on the CD. ArcExplorer provides GIS capabilities, such as zoom, query, identify, and theme layering. The Atlas provides access to extensive help and documentation directly from its interface. The same help and documentation are available from NCDC's Atlas Help and Atlas Documentation pages. Sample maps are available from its Atlas Web Page. Additionally, the CD contains all of the data (in "dbf" format) used to produce the Atlas. NOTE: Most of these maps can also be ordered individually in a high resolution Adobe PDF format, or as ESRI Shape Files. 
