The U.S. Historical Climatology Network Monthly Data, Version 2.5 consists of precipitation and temperature data corrected for changes in station location, instrumentation, and observing practices. The data includes sets of Maximum, Minimum, and Average Temperature and Precipitation that are raw, adjusted for time-of-observation bias, or processed through the Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm. It is archived with station information and source code for reading the data.
Use Cases
- Analyzing long-term climate trends based on homogenized temperature and precipitation records.
- Studying station-level weather variability based on raw and adjusted data flags.
- Developing climate models using quality-controlled historical weather station data.
- Researching the impact of observation practice changes on climate records.
Strengths
- Data is corrected for changes in station location, instrumentation, and observing practices.
- Includes multiple data versions: raw, time-of-observation bias adjusted, and algorithmically homogenized.
- Stations were selected for coverage, record length, completeness, and historical stability.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
Provenance
- Source
- NOAA_NCEI
- Collection Method
- Data from the NOAA Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) Network, corrected and homogenized.
- Time Range
- null
- Freshness
- null
- Geography
- United States