自1870年以来，联邦政府一直在向公众提供气象和气候服务，但专门为工程界提供服务的历史要短得多。20世纪30年代，随着穿孔卡片数据处理方法的发展，总结大量观测数据以解决与农业、建筑、交通、公共安全、人类健康和工程相关的特定环境问题在经济上变得可行。直到第二次世界大战，气候学在战略和战术规划中的价值变得显而易见，气候学作为一门应用科学的实用性才得到充分承认。从那时起，对解决无数特定天气相关问题的现成气候信息的要求迅速增长，并成为一个重要行业。本文旨在概述联邦政府民用机构向工程师提供的服务和产品，尤其是美国国家海洋和大气管理局（NOAA），它是专门负责归档国家气象（天气）数据和描述美国气候的机构。 引文:研讨会，ASHRAE交易，1987年，第93卷，pt。田纳西州纳什维尔2号

The federal government has been providing meteorological and climatological services to the public since 1870, but the provision of services specifically tailored to the engineering community has a much shorter history. Summarization of the vast volume of observational data to address specific environmental problems related to agriculture, architecture, transportation, public safety, human health, and engineering became economically feasible in the 1930s with the development of the punched card method of data processing. The utility of climatology as an applied science was not well recognized until World War II when its value in strategic and tactical planning became apparent. Since that time, the requirements for readily accessible climatological information addressing a myriad of specific weather-related problems have grown by leaps and bounds and have emerged as a significant industry. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of services and products available to the engineer from civilian agencies of the federal government with particular emphasis on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is the agency specifically charged with the responsibility for archiving the nation’s meteorological (weather) data and for describing the climate of the United States.