U.S. Soil Temperatures from 1967 to 1981

U.S. Soil Temperatures is a historical dataset archived at the National Climatic Data Center. It contains daily soil temperature measurements at various depths, along with soil type and monthly extremes, collected from cooperative agriculture research stations. The digital data covers the period from January 1967 through December 1981.

Use Cases

• Modeling historical soil temperature trends based on daily measurements and monthly extremes.
• Analyzing soil temperature variation by soil type (e.g., grass, bare ground, sod).
• Correlating soil conditions with agricultural outcomes based on data from research stations.
• Studying long-term environmental changes using the 15-year temporal coverage.

Strengths

• Covers a 15-year period from 1967 to 1981.
• Includes multiple soil types such as grass, fallow, bare ground, and straw mulch.
• Provides daily measurements plus monthly maximum, minimum, and average temperatures.

Limitations

• Last updated 1981-01-01 00:00:00; freshness should be verified.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

NOAA_NCEI / National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)

Collection Method

Daily measurements from federal, state, and university agriculture research stations in the cooperative network.

Time Range

1967-01-01 to 1981-12-31

Freshness

1981-01-01 00:00:00

Geography

United States