Weather observing stations may have multiple identification numbers or names, depending on what networks or organizations they are part of.  Below is a description of the identification codes used.

WBAN –Weather Bureau Army Navy identifier
This identifier was introduced in the 1960s in an attempt to standardize meteorological identifiers and is similar to the WMO identifier (see below). It is a five-digit number.

COOP (NWS Coop Number) –U.S. Cooperative Network
This is a six-digit number assigned to station in the U.S. Cooperative Network operated by the National Weather Service. The first two digits identify the state, and the last four digits identify the station.

FAA Location ID –Federal Aviation Administration
This is a three- or four-letter alpha numeric identifier that was widely used for aviation and meteorological purposes. It has been replaced by the ICAO ID in general use.

WMO Number –World Meteorological organization
This is a 5-digit numeric code to identify a land weather station. The first two digits are referred to as the "block number "and refer to the geographic area (00-29 Europe, 30-59 Asia, 60-68 Africa, 69 special use, 70-79 North America, 80-89 South America, 90-99 Oceania). The last three digits are loosely referred to as the "station number ".

ICAO ID –International Civil Aviation Organization
This is a four character alphanumeric code defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization. The first character defines the region (for example, “K ”defines the 48 contiguous states), and the following three characters are the station identifier.

GHCN ID –Global Historical Climate network
The GHCN is an integrated database of daily climate summaries from land surface stations across the globe produced by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI, formerly NCDC). The identifier consists of an 11-character alphanumeric code. The first two characters denote the FIPS country code, the third character is a network code that identifies the station numbering system used, and the remaining eight characters contain the actual station ID. The network code has the following three values:         

C = U.S. Cooperative Network identification number (last six characters of the GHCN-Daily ID)
W = WBAN identification number (last five characters of the GHCN-Daily ID)
0 = other (station identified by up to eight alphanumeric characters)
Precipitation data from the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow network (CoCoRaHS) is also included in the GHCN data set. CoCoRaHS stations are identified by the US1 at the beginning of the ID, followed by the CoCoRaHS station ID info.
Example: US1ILCP0001
US1 = CoCoRaHS network
IL = state designator (in this case Illinois)
CP = County ID (in this case Champaign County)
0001 = Station number. Station numbers are assigned sequentially within each county.

NWSLI –National Weather Service Location identifier
This is a three- or five-character alphanumeric identifier. Three-character IDs are alphanumeric. Five-character IDs consist of a three letter prefix, usually a mnemonic of the city or station name, and a two-character alphanumeric state code.