Weather Glossary: N's

National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) (formally National Climatic Data Center) are responsible for hosting and providing access to one of the most significant archives on earth, with comprehensive oceanic, atmospheric, and geophysical data. From the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun and from million-year-old tree rings to near real-time satellite images, NCEI is the Nation's leading authority for environmental information.

By preserving, stewarding, and maximizing the utility of the Federal government's billion-dollar investment in high-quality environmental data, NCEI remains committed to providing products and services to private industry and businesses, local to international governments, academia, as well as the general public.

A system that directly integrates the effects of fuels, topography, and weather into components that deal with fire occurrence and fire behavior potential. The system uses the components to derive indices that indicate the number of fires, difficulty of containment, and finally, the total fire control job in a rating area.

The system is intended to provide guidance for short-range planning by evaluating the near upper limits of the behavior of fires that might occur in an area during the rating period. It is not designed to serve as a direct fire behavior forecast.

This center maintains a continuous watch on tropical cyclones over the Atlantic, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and the Eastern Pacific from 15 May through November 30. The Center prepares and distributes hurricane watches and warnings for the general public, and also prepares and distributes marine and military advisories for other users.

During the "off-season" NHC provides training for U.S. emergency managers and representatives from many other countries that are affected by tropical cyclones. NHC also conducts applied research to evaluate and improve hurricane forecasting techniques, and is involved in public awareness programs.

An acronym for the National Centers for Environmental Prediction. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration created the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) to take advantage of improving technology and better serve the public and modernized National Weather Service.

The NCEP's goal is to protect life and property, as well as mitigate economic loss, by providing accurate forecasts and forecast guidance products to weather service field offices.

The NCEP prepares and makes available national forecasts and outlooks of weather and climate. Meteorologists currently generate weather forecasts for three to five days, soon to extend to seven days. Climate predictions are made for two weeks out to a year. Nine national centers comprise the NCEP:

• Aviation Weather Center
• Climate Prediction Center
• Environmental Modeling Center
• Weather Prediction Center
• NCEP Central Operations
• Ocean Prediction Center
• Space Weather Prediction Center
• Storm Prediction Center
• Tropical Prediction Center

The NCEP was established in 1958 as the National Meteorological Center (NMC). Since the center's beginning, operational weather forecasting has transformed from an infant discipline into a mature science.

This marine forecast is issued every six hours and they will usually cover a 36-hour period. The term nearshore refers to The Great Lakes waters within five nautical miles (eight kilometers) of shore.

Since the Great Lakes have a large shoreline, these forecasts are broken up into numerous segments and they are issued by several National Weather Service offices in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, and New York.

This provides a one-way broadcast communication of NOAA environmental data and information in near-real time to NOAA and external users. This broadcast service is implemented by a commercial provider of satellite communications utilizing C-band.

Weather data is collected by GOES satellite environmental sensors and NWS observing systems, and processed to create products. The products are fed to the AWIPS Network Control Facility (NCF) which routes the products to the appropriate NOAAPORT channel for uplink and broadcast.

It is the voice of the National Weather Service. NOAA Weather Radio broadcasts National Weather Service warnings, watches, forecasts and other hazard information 24 hours a day.

It is provided as a public service by the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards network has more than 700 stations in the 50 states and near adjacent coastal waters, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and U.S. Pacific Territories.

The NOAA Weather Wire Service is the primary telecommunications network for NWS forecasts, warnings and other products to the mass media (newspapers, radio stations, TV, etc.) and emergency management agencies. The NWWS is a satellite communications system that transmits NWS products directly from NWS offices to external users.

The NWWS satellite communications system is operated by GTE Corp., under contract to the NWS. The system uses satellite transmitting (i.e. "uplink") equipment at more than 58 major NWS forecast offices throughout the continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

NSSL is one of NOAA's internationally known Environmental Research Laboratories, leading the way in investigations of all aspects of severe weather.

Headquartered in Norman OK with staff in Colorado, Nevada, Washington, Utah, and Wisconsin, the people of NSSL, in partnership with the National Weather Service, are dedicated to improving severe weather warnings and forecasts in order to save lives and reduce property damage.