El Niño Rapid Response Surface Meteorological Data from Kiritimati Island

Surface meteorological data from Kiritimati Island was collected from January 25 to March 28, 2016, as part of NOAA's El Niño Rapid Response Field Campaign. The dataset contains 2-minute and 1-minute interval measurements of air pressure, temperature, humidity, wind, and rain, which have been corrected and screened for quality. NOAA scientists created this dataset to document the 2015-2016 El Niño episode in detail.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the relationship between local surface conditions (air_temperature, relative_humidity) and the 2015-2016 El Niño event.
• Validating and improving weather forecast models using high-frequency wind_speed and wind_from_direction observations from a central Pacific location.
• Studying extreme weather events by examining correlated spikes in rain, wind_speed_of_gust, and air_pressure during the campaign period.
• Assessing sensor performance and data reliability in remote field deployments by monitoring battery_voltage trends over time.

Strengths

• Data has been visually screened for physically unreasonable values, indicating a manual quality control step.
• Measurements are corrected for known instrument issues where possible, with bad/missing data flagged.
• Provides high-temporal-resolution data, switching from 2-minute to 1-minute averaging periods on February 11, 2016.

Limitations

• Key metadata like row count, file size, and license information are missing from all platform entries.
• The last updated date conflicts between sources: one lists 2016-03-28, while another lists 2026-03-05.

Provenance

Source

NOAA/Earth System Research Laboratory's Physical Sciences Division, archived by NOAA NCEI.

Collection Method

Field campaign measurements collected from a land-based station on Kiritimati Island.

Time Range

2016-01-25 to 2016-03-28

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:31:22.285532

Geography

Collected at 2.01°N, 157.40°W (Kiritimati Island), elevation 3.6 m above sea level.