Daily Global Weather Measurements, 1929-2009 (NCDC, GSOD)
Data originally collected as part of the Global Surface Summary of Day (GSOD) by the National Climactic Data Center (NCDC). Data collected, transformed, and uploaded by Infochimps.org.
Global summary of day data for 18 surface meteorological elements are derived from the synoptic/hourly observations contained in USAF DATSAV3 Surface data and Federal Climate Complex Integrated Surface Data (ISD). Historical data are generally available for 1929 to the present, with data from 1973 to the present being the most complete. For some periods, one or more countries' data may not be available due to data restrictions or communications problems. In deriving the summary of day data, a minimum of 4 observations for the day must be present (allows for stations which report 4 synoptic observations/day). Since the data are converted to constant units (e.g, knots), slight rounding error from the originally reported values may occur (e.g, 9.9 instead of 10.0).
The mean daily values described below are based on the hours of operation for the station. For some stations/countries, the visibility will sometimes 'cluster' around a value (such as 10 miles) due to the practice of not reporting visibilities greater than certain distances. The daily extremes and totals—maximum wind gust, precipitation amount, and snow depth—will only appear if the station reports the data sufficiently to provide a valid value. Therefore, these three elements will appear less frequently than other values. Also, these elements are derived from the stations' reports during the day, and may comprise a 24-hour period which includes a portion of the previous day. The data are reported and summarized based on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT, 0000Z — 2359Z) since the original synoptic/hourly data are reported and based on GMT.
As for quality control (QC), the input data undergo extensive automated QC to correctly 'decode' as much of the synoptic data as possible, and to eliminate many of the random errors found in the original data. Then, these data are QC'ed further as the summary of day data are derived. However, we expect that a very small % of the errors will remain in the summary of day data.
The data are strictly ASCII, with a mixture of character data, real values, and integer values.
Please see the README.txt, country-list.txt, and ish-history.txt files for more information on how to interpret weather measurements.
**This data set can only be used within the United States. If you redistribute any of these data to others, you must include this same notification.**
Global summary of day data for 18 surface meteorological elements are derived from the synoptic/hourly observations contained in USAF DATSAV3 Surface data and Federal Climate Complex Integrated Surface Data (ISD). Historical data are generally available for 1929 to the present, with data from 1973 to the present being the most complete. For some periods, one or more countries' data may not be available due to data restrictions or communications problems. In deriving the summary of day data, a minimum of 4 observations for the day must be present (allows for stations which report 4 synoptic observations/day). Since the data are converted to constant units (e.g, knots), slight rounding error from the originally reported values may occur (e.g, 9.9 instead of 10.0).
The mean daily values described below are based on the hours of operation for the station. For some stations/countries, the visibility will sometimes 'cluster' around a value (such as 10 miles) due to the practice of not reporting visibilities greater than certain distances. The daily extremes and totals—maximum wind gust, precipitation amount, and snow depth—will only appear if the station reports the data sufficiently to provide a valid value. Therefore, these three elements will appear less frequently than other values. Also, these elements are derived from the stations' reports during the day, and may comprise a 24-hour period which includes a portion of the previous day. The data are reported and summarized based on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT, 0000Z — 2359Z) since the original synoptic/hourly data are reported and based on GMT.
As for quality control (QC), the input data undergo extensive automated QC to correctly 'decode' as much of the synoptic data as possible, and to eliminate many of the random errors found in the original data. Then, these data are QC'ed further as the summary of day data are derived. However, we expect that a very small % of the errors will remain in the summary of day data.
The data are strictly ASCII, with a mixture of character data, real values, and integer values.
Please see the README.txt, country-list.txt, and ish-history.txt files for more information on how to interpret weather measurements.
**This data set can only be used within the United States. If you redistribute any of these data to others, you must include this same notification.**
