The Oregon Climate Service
OCS is located on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis, Oregon is the state repository for weather and climate information.
We are affiliated with OSU's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences (COAS).

OCS Staff
Cadee Hale, Website/ Publications Assistant
Sara Joos, Student Assistant

Our Mission
To collect, manage and maintain Oregon weather and climate data.
To provide weather and climate information to those within and outside the state of Oregon.
To educate the people of Oregon on current and emerging climate issues.
To perform independent research related to weather and climate issues.

Linkages

OCS acts as the liaison with:

• National Climatic Data Center
  
• Western Regional Climate Center
  
• National Weather Service
  
• Natural Resources Conservation Service
  
• Climate Prediction Center
  
• American Association of State Climatologists
  
• Other state climate offices

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Climate Data

OCS maintains the most complete set of state weather and climate records in Oregon. A large amount of the data is stored in a computer-accessible format (hard disks and magnetic tapes) for easy retrieval and manipulation. In addition, various studies, reports, summaries, etc. are stored on paper and/or fiche. To permit flexibility and efficiency, OCS provides data in a variety of formats:

• Telephone or Fax
  
• E-mail attachment
  
• Hard copy via US mail
  
• Anonymous ftp site
  
• IBM-compatible diskette
  
• Macintosh diskette
  
• Personal meeting or presentation

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Services

On average, OCS handles about 6,000 telephone or mail data requests per year. OCS provides a full range of climate-related services to both the public and private sectors. Services/products include, but are not restricted to:

• Site-specific climate reports/summaries.
  
• Various statistical analyses, such as means, extremes, probabilities, percentiles, threshold exceedances, etc.
  
• Climate tables/inventories.
  
• Precipitation maps.
  
• Customized research.
  
• Current climate data and information.

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Computing

OCS uses state-of-the-art computers to store and manipulate climate data. A variety of UNIX, IBM-compatible, and Macintosh, workstations are utilized. In addition, a comprehensive World Wide Web (WWW) site is Maintained by OCS.

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Publications

OCS publishes the Oregon Weather Summary, a monthly report on the current climatic conditions in Oregon. In addition, OCS has published numerous data summaries and special reports. They include:

• Climate Zone Summaries
• Agricultural Regions Summary
• Local Climatological Data
  
• Corvallis, OR Monthly Summary
  
• Precipitation maps (Oregon, Oregon counties, U.S. States, and U.S.)

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Pricing

OCS is partially funded through the State Government and the archives maintained are free to the public. However, with the great number of requests minimal fees are required for most data requests to cover labor and delivery costs.

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Research

OCS has been involved in numerous research projects undertaken by governments, universities, and private interests. Among these are:

• Climate variability studies
  
• Precipitation mapping (PRISM)
  
• Quality control of data
  
• El Nino/Southern Oscillation and its influence on western climate
  
• Drought and flood studies
  
• Climate change
  
• Long-term/lead forecasting
  
• Air quality studies
  
• Wind modeling

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