Increased emphasis on energy conservation has led to the development of computer models that simulate building energy systems. A weather tape containing one year of "typical" weather observations is a key input to the models. The engineering community prefers to have serially complete (24 observations a day for 365 days) weather data for a specific location. The difficulties that climatologists face in providing this data include problems of missing data, the fact that reference year data requests must often compete with higher priority projects, and the time and resources required to convert from one of the many data formats now in use.

Little can be done to change the priority system for processing climatological data requests, but the production of reference year data requests can be simplified. Tests currently underway at the US Air Force Environmental Technical Applications Center and the US Anny Construction Engineering Research Laboratory will help climatologists determine the sensitivity of the models to missing data and will investigate the regional characteristics of building energy analyses. Standardization of data types and format will also be attempted. The impact of nonserially complete data and substitute stations on the timeliness and relevance of reference year data is addressed.