Climate/Meteorological Web References
AppleSeed Permaculture
Ethan C. Roland
This resource document was created to aid the Permaculture Design community in obtaining
basic but important Climatalogical/Meteorological data for any given design site. It is far
from complete—we’re missing good sources of wind data for the US and all the
Temperature/Precipitation data for countries outside the US. If you would like to contribute
references or resources, please contact me through Hudson Valley Permaculture:
www.hudsonvalleypermaculture.org
Additionally, it would be great if some computer-savvy folks could convert these resources
into a user-friendly web-site: Input your Lat/Long coordinates + Elevation and receive all of
this info in one click. That would be awesome, and not too difficult to do.
NOTES
Basically, unless you are in a place that has its own active weather station (like a town/city
with an airport, or a university), it will be challenging to obtain precise site-specific data on
Temperature, Precipitation, and Wind. You will more likely find data for the nearest large
city. For Sun Angles, however, you can determine exact figures as long as you have the
site’s latitude and longitude.
Latitude/Longitude
USGS Geographical Names Information System: Lat/Long for geographical and cultural
features in the US and Antaractica.
http://geonames.usgs.gov/
This site is sweet. Search by any geographical feature!
http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/
US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency: Lat/Long for anywhere on earth EXCEPT the
US.
http://gnswww.nga.mil/geonames/GNS/index.jsp
Temperature/Precipitation/Wind
Personal Weather stations in the US, with temperature, precipitation, and wind data.
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation
NNDC (NNOA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) National Data Centers)
http://www.noaa.gov/climate.html Then click “Climate Data”:
http://ols.nndc.noaa.gov/plolstore/plsql/olstore.prodspecific?prodnum=C00095-PUBA0001#TABLES (I’m also in the process of converting the useful tables from this site to
excel format so it’s easier to work with them. Check www.hudsonvalleypermaculture.org
for updates.)
Note:
To determine the number of gallons of water that fall on an acre in a year, multiply annual
precipitation by the acreage by (27152.4)… this will give gallons/year for any given site.
This is a distillation of: (in/yr)  (acres)  (6,272,640in2/1acre)  (1ft3/1728in3) 
(7.48gallons/1ft3)
To determine the number of gallons of water that fall on a roof in a year, multiply (annual
precipitation)  (catchment area)  (0.623)… this will give gallons/year for any given
surface area.
This is a distillation of: (in/yr)  (ft2)  (1ft/12in)  (7.48gallons/1ft3)
Sun Angles
Sun Angle Computation given Lat/Long, elevation, time, time zone.
http://www.susdesign.com/sunangle/
Use Jun 21-23 and Dec 21-23 as dates, the year doesn’t matter much.
Use this page to find the timezone: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/world_tzones.html
And the above pages to find US or Worldwide coordinates.
Estimate elevation from contour maps. Make sure to input “12:00” on the 24hr clock, and
don’t worry about the ‘time basis’ or the azimuth. The Number you’re looking for is the first
one that pops up, the ‘altitude angle’.
US Navy site, fairly clear and user-friendly.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/AltAz.html
See the glossary bottom of the page for definitions of altitude and azimuth. The year input
doesn’t really matter, nor does the time interval. What we are looking for is the June 22
12:00 sun angle and the December 22 12:00 sun angle (The 21st gives the same result). Use
the top form for US locations, and the bottom form for worldwide locations. The time zone
locator is useful as well.