BOREAS/AES: 15-Minute Surface Meteorological Data from 14 Stations

Fourteen automated stations across the BOREAS region recorded surface meteorological conditions every 15 minutes from August 1993 to December 1996. Parameters include station and sea-level pressure, temperature, dewpoint, wind speed and direction, precipitation, and snow depth. This high-temporal-resolution data was collected by Canadian Atmospheric Environment Service personnel for the BOREAS project.

Use Cases

• Analyzing diurnal and seasonal cycles of temperature and humidity based on 15-minute readings.
• Studying wind patterns and extreme wind events using resultant wind speed, direction, and peak wind data.
• Modeling hydrological processes using precipitation, liquid precipitation, and snow depth measurements.
• Investigating pressure systems and trends via mean sea level pressure, station pressure, and pressure tendency columns.
• Calibrating remote sensing data for the boreal forest with ground-truth surface meteorological observations.

Strengths

• Provides high-frequency 15-minute interval data, enabling analysis of short-term meteorological phenomena.
• Covers a wide geographic area with data from 14 distinct stations across the BOREAS region.
• Includes a comprehensive set of 18 surface meteorological parameters, from temperature to snow depth.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low; column names and exact row counts are unspecified across all platforms.
• Source platforms conflict on the last update date, with one listing 1994 and another listing 2026, casting doubt on data currency.
• The temporal coverage ends in 1996, making the dataset historical rather than contemporary.

Provenance

Source

Canadian Atmospheric Environment Service (AES) personnel, collected for the BOREAS project.

Collection Method

Data gathered from 14 automated meteorology stations.

Time Range

August 1993 to December 1996.

Freshness

Conflicting: NASA Earthdata lists 1994-12-31, while Data.gov lists 2026-04-10 (likely a metadata refresh).

Geography

BOREAS (Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study) region.