NCEI-NOAA/climdiv/doc/county-readme.txt
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This documentation describes the record format for the county files on
/pub/data/cirs/climdiv that have the filenames:
climdiv-pcpncy-vx.y.z-YYYYMMDD
climdiv-tmaxcy-vx.y.z-YYYYMMDD
climdiv-tmincy-vx.y.z-YYYYMMDD
climdiv-tmpccy-vx.y.z-YYYYMMDD
nClimDiv
COUNTY
TEMPERATURE-PRECIPITATION
OCTOBER 2018
The major parameters in this file are sequential climatic county monthly
maximum, minimum and average temperature (deg. F. to 10ths) and precipitation (inches to 100ths).
Period of record is 1895 through latest month available, updated
monthly.
Values from the most recent two calendar years will be updated on a monthly
basis. Period of record updates will occur when the underlying data set
undergoes a version change.
METHODOLOGY:
County values in nClimDiv were derived from area-weighted averages of
grid-point estimates interpolated from station data. A nominal grid resolution
of 5 km was used to ensure that all divisions had sufficient spatial sampling
(only four small divisions had less than 100 points) and because the impact of
elevation on precipitation is minimal below 5 km. Station data were gridded
via climatologically aided interpolation to minimize biases from topographic
and network variability.
The Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) Daily dataset is the source
of station data for nClimDiv. GHCN-Daily contains several major observing
networks in North America, five of which are used here. The primary network
is the National Weather Service (NWS) Cooperative Observing (COOP) program,
which consists of stations operated by volunteers as well as by agencies such
as the Federal Aviation Administration. To improve coverage in western states
and along international borders, nClimDiv also includes the National
Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) Remote Automatic Weather Station (RAWS) network,
the USDA Snow Telemetry (SNOTEL) network, the Environment Canada (EC)
network (south of 52<35>N), and part of Mexicos Servicio Meteorologico Nacional
(SMN) network (north of 24<32>N). Note that nClimDiv does not incorporate
precipitation data from RAWS because that networks tipping-bucket gauges are
unheated, leading to suspect cold-weather data.
All GHCN-Daily stations are routinely processed through a suite of logical,
serial, and spatial quality assurance reviews to identify erroneous
observations. For nClimDiv, all such data were set to missing before
computing monthly values, which in turn were subjected to additional serial
and spatial checks to eliminate residual outliers. Stations having at least
10 years of valid monthly data since 1950 were used in nClimDiv.
For temperature, bias adjustments were computed to account for historical
changes in observation time, station location, temperature instrumentation,
and siting conditions. Changes in observation time are only problematic for
the COOP network whereas changes in station location and instrumentation occur
in almost all surface networks. As in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network
version 2.5, the method of Karl et al. (1986) was applied to remove the
observation time bias from the COOP network, and the pairwise method of Menne
and Williams (2009) was used to address changes in station location and
instrumentation in all networks. Because the pairwise method also largely
accounts for local, unrepresentative trends that arise from changes in siting
conditions, nClimDiv contains no separate adjustment in that regard.
For additional information on how nClimDiv is constructed, please see:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JAMC-D-13-0248.1
STATE CODE TABLE:
Range of values of 01-50.
01 Alabama 28 New Jersey
02 Arizona 29 New Mexico
03 Arkansas 30 New York
04 California 31 North Carolina
05 Colorado 32 North Dakota
06 Connecticut 33 Ohio
07 Delaware 34 Oklahoma
08 Florida 35 Oregon
09 Georgia 36 Pennsylvania
10 Idaho 37 Rhode Island
11 Illinois 38 South Carolina
12 Indiana 39 South Dakota
13 Iowa 40 Tennessee
14 Kansas 41 Texas
15 Kentucky 42 Utah
16 Louisiana 43 Vermont
17 Maine 44 Virginia
18 Maryland 45 Washington
19 Massachusetts 46 West Virginia
20 Michigan 47 Wisconsin
21 Minnesota 48 Wyoming
22 Mississippi 50 Alaska
23 Missouri
24 Montana
25 Nebraska
26 Nevada
27 New Hampshire
FILE FORMAT:
IMPORTANT NOTE:
The format of the county data is slightly different than the other data files. To accomadate
the 2 digit state code and the 3 digit county FIPS code, the first field contains 11 columns.
The other data files still contain 10 columns.
Element Record
Name Position Element Description
STATE-CODE 1-2 STATE-CODE as indicated in State Code Table as
described in FILE 1. Range of values is 01-48.
DIVISION-NUMBER 3-5 COUNTY FIPS - Range of values 001-999.
ELEMENT CODE 6-7 01 = Precipitation
02 = Average Temperature
27 = Maximum Temperature
28 = Minimum Temperature
YEAR 8-11 This is the year of record. Range is 1895 to
current year processed.
(all data values are right justified):
JAN-VALUE 12-18
Monthly Divisional Temperature format (f7.2)
Range of values -50.00 to 140.00 degrees Fahrenheit.
Decimals retain a position in the 7-character
field. Missing values in the latest year are
indicated by -99.99.
Monthly Divisional Precipitation format (f7.2)
Range of values 00.00 to 99.99. Decimal point
retains a position in the 7-character field.
Missing values in the latest year are indicated
by -9.99.
FEB-VALUE 19-25
MAR-VALUE 26-32
APR-VALUE 33-39
MAY-VALUE 40-46
JUNE-VALUE 47-53
JULY-VALUE 54-60
AUG-VALUE 61-67
SEPT-VALUE 68-74
OCT-VALUE 75-81
NOV-VALUE 82-88
DEC-VALUE 89-95