Global Climate Data Set 1 – Daily Temperatures

/ June 12, 2017

Featured_data1

Introduction

In this article, I have included a large amount (>27 Gb) of daily temperature data from monitoring stations across the world. This data contains daily Tmax, Tmin and Trange at each monitoring station.

The data included in these downloadable files were extracted from the GHCN on 3/18/2017. For each monitoring station, the data that was retained included the following:

  1. Both Tmax and Tmin were available for each day
  2. No quality assurance or quality control issues were identified for either Tmax or Tmin
  3. All available data that met 1&2 above is included.

Tonight I checked the repository links (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/ghcn-daily) to verify their accuracy, and it turns out that the links have now changed (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/land-based-station-data/land-based-datasets/global-historical-climatology-network-ghcn) (Thanks for the info, Craig Jackson). This website reorganization is good as it appears that more data is now available and the monitoring station stats have been updated.

new_data_links

Figure 1 -The GHCN data is now available on this refreshed website, along with a lot of other data.

 

 

US State Daily Temperature Data

You can click each link to download the state-level max and min temperature data set. Figure 2 shows what you get in each file.

Tmax_Tmin_data

Figure 2 – These are the fields in each Tmax and Tmin data file.

Figure 3 shows a partial listing (the top 10) of the 50 states worth of data that is included in the following links. Click here for an Excel file that gives you the file sizes for the *.csv and *.zip files for each state.

Top10_States

Figure 3 – The top 10 US states for daily temperature data.

US State Daily Data Download Links

The total size of these zip files is approximately 1.7 Gb. The first two zip files include all the states and they are big at 840 and 928 Mb. If you don’t want data from all the states, you can download each state one-by-one.

  1. States_1_25 (840 Mb = Big File)
  2. States_26_50 (928 Mb = Big File)
  3. AK_Daily_Temps
  4. AL_Daily_Temps
  5. AR_Daily_Temps
  6. AZ_Daily_Temps
  7. CA_Daily_Temps
  8. CO_Daily_Temps
  9. CT_Daily_Temps
  10. DE_Daily_Temps
  11. FL_Daily_Temps
  12. GA_Daily_Temps
  13. HI_Daily_Temps
  14. IA_Daily_Temps
  15. ID_Daily_Temps
  16. IL_Daily_Temps
  17. IN_Daily_Temps
  18. KS_Daily_Temps
  19. KY_Daily_Temps
  20. LA_Daily_Temps
  21. MA_Daily_Temps
  22. MD_Daily_Temps
  23. ME_Daily_Temps
  24. MI_Daily_Temps
  25. MN_Daily_Temps
  26. MO_Daily_Temps
  27. MS_Daily_Temps
  28. MT_Daily_Temps
  29. NC_Daily_Temps
  30. ND_Daily_Temps
  31. NE_Daily_Temps
  32. NH_Daily_Temps
  33. NJ_Daily_Temps
  34. NM_Daily_Temps
  35. NV_Daily_Temps
  36. NY_Daily_Temps
  37. OH_Daily_Temps
  38. OK_Daily_Temps
  39. OR_Daily_Temps
  40. PA_Daily_Temps
  41. RI_Daily_Temps
  42. SC_Daily_Temps
  43. SD_Daily_Temps
  44. TN_Daily_Temps
  45. TX_Daily_Temps
  46. UT_Daily_Temps
  47. VA_Daily_Temps
  48. VT_Daily_Temps
  49. WA_Daily_Temps
  50. WI_Daily_Temps
  51. WV_Daily_Temps
  52. WY_Daily_Temps

 

Non-US Country Daily Data Download Link

 

Figure 4 shows a partial listing (the top 10) of the 174 countries worth of data that is included in the following link. Click here to get an Excel file showing you the complete content and file sizes for each of these countries. Note that the California *.csv data is nearly as big as the data from the entire country of Russia!

Top10_nonUS_countries

Figure 4 – The top 10 non-US countries that reported daily temperatures.

 

The link shown below will send a 717 Mb zip file down to your machine (so ready to wait a few minutes for the download to complete, depending upon your internet speed).

  1. All Non-US Countries – Daily Temperatures

 

An Example Tableau Workbook

You can build a lot of different types of workbooks and dashboards for this data.  Figure 5 is an example for Nebraska for the month of March. Click here to retrieve a zipped version of the Tableau workbook that created this dashboard. All you have to do is use the replace data source feature to use this dashboard with any of the other state or country *.csv files.

Daily Tmax DB_Nebraska

Figure 5 – A Nebraska-based dashboard showing data over time for the month of March.

 

Figure 6 shows an example of daily data averaged by month and then by decade for a monitoring station in Arkansas.  The total time span is 130 years.

Step1_Tmax-daily

Figure 6 – An example dashboard for a monitoring station in Arkansas.

 

Final Thoughts

The next article in the series will include monthly aggregated temperature data, followed by decade-level data and a few other things. Once that is done, I’ll move onto publishing the precipitation, snow,  and snow depth data in these easy-to-use formats. Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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