NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration presented an online webinar on Feb. 26, 2014.  From their description:

• Duration: 40 minutes
• Speakers:
  • Greg Hammer , Meteorologist, NCDC
  • Scott Stephens, Meteorologist, NCDC
  • Stuart Hinson, Meteorologist, NCDC
  • Mara Sprain, MALS Librarian, NCDC
  • Susan Osborne, Technical Writer and Communications Specialist, NCDC

“Summary: NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) maintains the world’s largest climate data archive and provides climatological services and data to every sector of the United States economy and to users worldwide. Records in the archive range from paleoclimatic data, to centuries-old journals, to data less than an hour old. The Center’s mission is to preserve these data and make them available to the public, business, industry, government, and researchers.

Data come to NCDC from not only land-based stations but also from ships, buoys, weather balloons, radars, satellites, and even sophisticated weather and climate models. With these data, NCDC develops national and global datasets. The datasets are used to maximize the use of our climatic and natural resources while also minimizing the risks caused by climate variability and weather extremes. NCDC has a statutory mission to describe the climate of the United States, and it acts as the “Nation’s Scorekeeper” regarding the trends and anomalies of weather and climate. NCDC’s climate data have been used in a variety of applications including agriculture, air quality, construction, education, energy, engineering, forestry, health, insurance, landscape design, livestock management, manufacturing, national security, recreation and tourism, retailing, transportation, and water resources management.”

“Participation is free, however registration is required. Upon registering, an e-mail confirmation of registration will include instructions for joining the Webinar. …Parts 2 and 3 of the webinar series will be presented in the spring of 2014. More information will come out on those individual webinars later.”

The NCDC webinar is directly at: http://login.icohere.com/connect/d_connect_itemframer.cfm?vsDTTitle=NCDC%20%2D%20The%20World%3Fs%20Largest%20Climate%20Data%20Archive&dseq=18332&dtseq=84935&emdisc=2&mkey=public1172&vbDTA=0&viNA=0&vsDTA=&PAN=2&bDTC=0&blog=0&vsSH=A

Government webinars are listed here: http://login.icohere.com/public/topics.cfm?cseq=1172.