Evidence & sources

Sample / Placeholder Data (local development only)

Update frequency

n/a

Resolution

n/a / n/a

Licence

Not applicable — synthetic values for local UI development.

Limitations

• This is placeholder data used to build and test the UI locally.
• It has not been validated against docs/data-sources.md and must not be treated as a real climate observation.
• Every panel currently reads this placeholder — real ingestion scripts have not been written yet.

NOAA CPC Weekly Niño Indices

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst8110.for

Update frequency

weekly

Resolution

regional index / weekly

Licence

U.S. government work — public domain (NOAA data policy).

Limitations

• Superseded by the noaa-oni source for v0.1: ONI already provides matching-resolution values on the same 3-month running mean the site's thresholds use, so this weekly file isn't ingested separately.
• See docs/learnings/2026-07-03-noaa-oni-ingestion.md.

NOAA ONI / RONI

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/oni.ascii.txt

Update frequency

monthly

Resolution

regional index / monthly (3-month running mean)

Licence

U.S. government work — public domain (NOAA data policy).

Limitations

• ONI is a 3-month running mean; it smooths out short-term weekly fluctuations.
• The most recent 1-2 periods may still be revised as more observations come in.

IRI/CPC ENSO Forecast Probabilities

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml

Update frequency

monthly (published mid-month, per the discussion's own schedule)

Resolution

regional index / monthly, rolling forecast periods

Licence

U.S. government work — public domain (NOAA data policy).

Limitations

• Not a structured El Nino/Neutral/La Nina probability table — IRI/CPC do not publish one for free scraping (checked 2026-07-03).
• The single extracted probability statement is whichever one the discussion happens to lead with; it is not necessarily the full picture across all lead times.
• Some months may not contain a matching 'X% chance...' sentence at all; the card falls back to alert status and synopsis only when that happens.

Natural Earth 1:110m Country Boundaries

https://www.naturalearthdata.com/

Update frequency

rarely (country borders change infrequently; refetched manually via scripts/fetch_basemap.py)

Resolution

1:110m (coarse/simplified — suitable for small web maps, not precise boundary disputes) / n/a (static reference data)

Licence

Public domain — no attribution required (Natural Earth terms of use).

Limitations

• 1:110m resolution simplifies coastlines significantly — not suitable for precise geographic analysis.

NOAA OISST v2.1 SST Anomaly Grid

https://coastwatch.pfeg.noaa.gov/erddap/griddap/ncdcOisst21Agg.html

Update frequency

weekly regeneration (.github/workflows/refresh-oisst.yml, Mondays 02:17 UTC); underlying OISST fields are daily with ~2-week latency

Resolution

0.25° native, sampled at stride 8 → 2.0° cells for the web map / daily fields, ~6 per month averaged into a monthly estimate

Licence

U.S. government work — public domain (NOAA data policy). Served by NOAA CoastWatch ERDDAP (official government endpoint, checked not to be a community mirror).

Limitations

• Monthly values are a mean of ~6 sampled daily fields, not NOAA's official monthly mean product; differences are small because SST anomalies evolve slowly, but the two are not identical.
• The most recent month is usually incomplete (OISST publishes with roughly two weeks of latency) and is flagged complete:false in the dataset.
• The Niño 3.4 box mean here is an unweighted mean of 2° cells for display context — the site's authoritative index remains NOAA ONI (see noaa-oni source).
• 2° cells are for visual/educational use, not precise local analysis.

Australian Bureau of Meteorology SOI

ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon/home/ncc/www/sco/soi/soiplaintext.html

Update frequency

monthly

Resolution

index (basin-wide) / monthly

Licence

BOM default copyright terms apply (see bom.gov.au/other/copyright.shtml) — free to access via anonymous FTP. Full copyright text not independently verifiable by automated fetch, since BOM's own copyright page blocks automated requests too.

Limitations

• Coupling classification follows the rule validated against real data in docs/methodology.md.
• SOI is one indicator of atmospheric response; it does not capture the full atmospheric picture.

BOM Rainfall / Drought Data (investigated, not ingested)

https://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/

Update frequency

not yet recorded

Resolution

/

Licence

n/a — not ingested.

Limitations

• CHIRPS/GPM IMERG gridded rainfall was ruled out (would require raster subsetting/processing, out of scope for v0.1).
• BOM's anonymous FTP channel (the sanctioned alternative used for SOI) does not carry rainfall decile/anomaly figures in usable text form — only static maps and a raw per-station archive that would require computing deciles ourselves.
• BOM's own website (www.bom.gov.au) 403s every scripted request regardless of User-Agent, including an honest self-identifying custom UA — only a browser-spoofed UA gets through, which this project will not do. See docs/learnings/2026-07-04-bom-rainfall-fully-blocked.md.
• Australia's regional impact card therefore still shows placeholder rainfall/land-stress figures pending a sanctioned BOM data channel.

NIWA Seasonal Climate Outlook

https://niwa.co.nz/climate-and-weather/seasonal-climate-outlook/seasonal-climate-outlook-july-september-2026

Update frequency

quarterly

Resolution

regional (per-region probability statement) / 3-month outlook period

Licence

NIWA/Earth Sciences New Zealand permits reproduction of Seasonal Climate Outlook content with attribution, issue date, and validity period retained.

Limitations

• Probability statements, not measured anomalies — a forecast, not an observation.
• Only the two eastern regions matching this card's existing framing are extracted; NIWA publishes six regions in total.
• Quarterly update cadence — the figure can be up to ~3 months stale between NIWA's own outlook releases.