[ESIP-all] temperature / precip data access?

[Bruce Barkstrom]

What is a big file?  The GHCN data didn't strike me as "big", but maybe I'm
used to
the ASCII format.

Along this line, what is it you want to do?  Look at individual numbers for
a single site
in a single month, or look at a time history for a single site?  Do you
want to build maps
with contributions from the data at all the sites in a given month?.  Do
you think students
would be interested in seeing if the precipitation record had statistically
significant changes
over time or from one site to another.    These aren't necessarily
overwhelming problems
However, if you want an answer, it will help to be specific about what
you're expecting.

In a sense, the questions above can be satisfied by fairly simple programs
that
can read the ASCII files, subset them based on user input, and then reformat
the results.  To answer them sensibly, it would also help to know if your
users have
any programming experience or none - and just want "results" of some sort.
If they
have experience, is it with Basic or some other language?

Also, since the sites are basically indexed by a World Meteorological
Organization
(WMO) assigned number, can your students work with that or do they need the
site
name?  Can they look for a site of interest based on longitude and
latitude, or do
they need some visual aid that would let them select what they want?  Would
it
be sufficient to have just sites in the U.S. or for a limited time range
(like the last
ten years)?

As a note, it might be interesting to see if there were some high school or
college
students who might want to contribute programming solutions.  I think, for
example,
that building a user interface that might serve as a "broker" for this work
would be
a good project for a first class in computer science.

Bruce B.

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Annette Schloss
<annette.schloss at unh.edu>wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
>
>  I am looking for easy online access to historical and current daily or
> monthly temperature and precip data for the US.  Preferably site data, but
> gridded would be ok, too.   I am looking for web access that would be
> useable by citizens (so not big files like the GHCN ftp site), or iPhone or
> iPad app versions.  Any help is appreciated!
>
> many thanks,
> -Annette Schloss
>
>
> _____________________________
> Dr. Annette L. Schloss
> Earth Systems Research Center
> 8 College Rd.
> University of New Hampshire
> Durham, NH 03824
> ph: 603-862-0348
> fax: 603-862-0188
> email: annette.schloss at unh.edu
> __________________________________________________________
>
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