[ESIP-all] temperature / precip data access?

Wed Nov 28 08:58:37 EST 2012

GHCN data is not raster image data.  The individual rain gage stations
are primarily located on continents with a much higher density of
stations in India and very low density in areas such as the Arctic
and Antarctic, as well as desserts.

The format from the National Climatic Data Center is not organized
to create tables with rows that have fields.  That isn't to say one
couldn't reformat the data to that form, but it isn't the current format.
I believe that the NOAA ERL (Boulder) web site has raingage data available
in some alternate formats.

For the monthly average data, each "record" is a collection of
twelve monthly averages for a particular station.  Thus, it's probably
easier to think of the data as being segments of a longer record.
For some purposes, the original data can be reformatted to stitch
together a complete time series for a particular station - although
the length of the time interval varies from station to station.

The temperature records and the Integrated Radiosonde data
(IGRA) have moderately similar formats to the precipitation data.
The radiosonde data are probably easier to visualize as "pins"
sticking out of a spherical Earth - again with a very non-uniform
areal density.

Bruce B.

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 7:44 AM, Peter Baumann <
p.baumann at jacobs-university.de> wrote:

>  Annette & all,
>
> when it comes to serving data for educational purposes, let me point you
> to the rasdaman ("raster data manager") raster server [1].
> It extends standard SQL with declarative image processing capabilities in
> n dimensions. The flexibility offered by the query language makes it an
> ideal education vehicle. We have used it for teaching [2], and students
> responded positively to the fact that they could write ad-hoc queries
> without programming. In the end, it helped to foster skills in analytic
> geometry, databases, and geo sciences simultaneously. There are ready-made
> VMs available for download.
>
> regards,
> Peter
>
> [1] http://www.rasdaman.org
> [2] Claudia Bauzer Medeiros, Peter Baumann, Constantin Jucovschi: *Introducing
> multidisciplinary thinking in Computer Engineering: A new way of teaching
> database systems*. IEEE Annual Global Engineering Education Conferencey<http://www.educon-conference.org/educon2010/index.htm>(EDUCON), April 14-16, 2010, Madrid, Spain
>
>
>
> On 11/28/2012 03:41 AM, Bruce Barkstrom wrote:
>
> 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
>> __________________________________________________________
>>
>> ><((((º>·´¯`·.¸¸..><((((º><((((º>·´¯`·.¸¸..><((((º>
>> __________________________________________________________
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
> --
> Dr. Peter Baumann
>  - Professor of Computer Science, Jacobs University Bremen
>    www.faculty.jacobs-university.de/pbaumann
>    mail: p.baumann at jacobs-university.de
>    tel: +49-421-200-3178, fax: +49-421-200-493178
>  - Executive Director, rasdaman GmbH Bremen (HRB 26793)
>    www.rasdaman.com, mail: baumann at rasdaman.com
>    tel: 0800-rasdaman, fax: 0800-rasdafax, mobile: +49-173-5837882
> "Si forte in alienas manus oberraverit hec peregrina epistola incertis ventis dimissa, sed Deo commendata, precamur ut ei reddatur cui soli destinata, nec preripiat quisquam non sibi parata." (mail disclaimer, AD 1083)
>
>
>
>
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