GHCN-Daily: a treasure trove of climate data awaiting discovery

Jaffrés, Jasmine B. D. (2019) GHCN-Daily: a treasure trove of climate data awaiting discovery. Computers & Geosciences, 122. pp. 35-44.

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DOI: 10.1016/j.cageo.2018.07.003

View at Publisher Website: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cageo.2018.07....

Abstract

International collaboration to create and maintain international, freely accessible datasets greatly facilitates research in many scientific fields. The Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN)-Daily database provides access to a diverse range of daily weather station data, including precipitation and temperature variables. These data are supplied as individual, station-specific files and structured in a non-delimited format. Here, the GHCN-Daily data structure, spatio-temporal content and associated caveats are delineated. The regularly updated collection now features data from over 100 000 stations in 218 countries and territories. While rigorous quality tests are routinely applied for GHCN-Daily, the database excludes the original quality flags from the source agencies.

The extraction of climate variables from the GHCN-Daily database can be challenging for novice users and may thus dissuade from the uptake of this valuable dataset. Consequently, a user-friendly toolkit for MATLAB and GNU Octave is also provided to aid data retrieval from all relevant weather stations. The toolkit reformats the extracted GHCN-Daily data into a more accessible structure to facilitate data mining and research on a large scale.


Item ID:	56806
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1873-7803
Keywords:	GHCN-Daily database, weather stations, global climate data availability, quality control, MATLAB, GNU Octave
Copyright Information:	© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Date Deposited:	09 Jan 2019 07:30
FoR Codes:	46 INFORMATION AND COMPUTING SCIENCES > 4612 Software engineering > 461204 Programming languages @ 60% 37 EARTH SCIENCES > 3702 Climate change science > 370202 Climatology @ 10% 46 INFORMATION AND COMPUTING SCIENCES > 4605 Data management and data science > 460501 Data engineering and data science @ 30%
SEO Codes:	89 INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION SERVICES > 8902 Computer Software and Services > 890205 Information Processing Services (incl. Data Entry and Capture) @ 60% 96 ENVIRONMENT > 9603 Climate and Climate Change > 960304 Climate Variability (excl. Social Impacts) @ 10% 89 INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION SERVICES > 8902 Computer Software and Services > 890201 Application Software Packages (excl. Computer Games) @ 30%
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