Worldwide GHCNv2 Temperature Data
As Anthony Watts and volunteers went about collecting site compliance information for meteorological stations included in the GHCNv2 data set, I got curious about the data set itself.
Visualizing the data can reveal a lot of information (or lack of information) as was shown recently by Anthony Watts and Stephen McIntyre when their work uncovered calculation errors in the GISS data set.
What I really wanted to see was data coverage and time series for every station included in the GHCN data. The information on these pages is the result of a few days work slicing and dicing the data set.
Contents
Currently, the navigation system is awful. Using the links below, you can navigate to the home page for the WMO Region where the country you are looking for is located. (Your browser's find function may come in handy). On that page, there will be a link to all the countries in that region. When follow the link for a given country, you will see a list of WMO station number for that country.
If you do not know the WMO station number for the station you are looking for, you can use the station locator provided by the NWS.
- WMO Region 1: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Cote D'Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Sao Tome And Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, The Gambia, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zaire, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Amsterdam Island (France), Ascension Island (U.K.), Canary Islands (Spain), Ceuta (Spain), Chagos Archipelago (U.K.), Lesotho, Mayotte (France), Melilla (Spain), Reunion Island (France), Rwanda, Swaziland, Tromelin Island (France), Western Sahara (Morocco)
- WMO Region 2: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Democratic People'S Republic Of Korea, India, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Republic Of Korea, Russian Federation (Asian Sector), Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen, Macau (Portugal), Maldives, Taiwan
- WMO Region 3: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, French Guiana (France), Falkland Islands (U.K.), South Georgia (U.K.)
- WMO Region 4: Barbados, Belize, Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Kitts And Nevis, The Bahamas, Trinidad And Tobago, United States Of America, Antigua And Barbuda, Bermuda (U.K.), British Virgin Islands (U.K.), Cayman Islands (U.K.), Dominica, Greenland (Denmark), Guadeloupe (France), Martinique (France), Netherlands Antilles (Netherlands), Puerto Rico (U.S.A.), Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent And The Grenadines, Saint Pierre & Miquelon Island (France), Turks And Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands (U.S.A.)
- WMO Region 5: Australia, Fiji, Indonesia, Kiribati, Malaysia, Nauru, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, American Samoa (U.S.A.), Brunei, Christmas Island (Australia), Cocos Islands (Australia), Cook Islands (New Zealand), Coral Sea Islands (Australia), Federated States Of Micronesia, French Polynesia (France), Guam (U.S.A.), Johnston Atoll (U.S.A.), Marshall Islands, New Caledonia (France), Niue (New Zealand), Norfolk Island (Australia), Northern Mariana Islands (U.S.A.), Belau, Pitcairn Island (U.K.), Tokelau, Wake Island (U.S.A.), Wallis And Futuna (France), Samoa
- WMO Region 6: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia And Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation (European Sector), Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Faroe Islands (Denmark), Gibraltar (U.K.), Madeira Islands (Portugal)
- WMO Region 7: Antarctica
- WMO Region 8: Ship Stations
Data Sources
As luck would have it, I accessed the date files below on August 8,
2007. As I was writing this document in the afternoon on August 9th, I
noticed that the files had just been updated. Based on diff
output, the only change seems to be the addition of July
2008 temperatures.
Currently, it takes several hours for my programs to plot all the graphs. As such, it might take some time before I update the graphics using the updated data set. In the mean time, I will see if I can write a program to output temperature anomaly graphs as well.
- Monthly Mean Temperatures (Raw)
- URL: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/v2.mean.Z. Accessed on: 2007/08/14
- Monthly Mean Temperatures (Adjusted)
- URL: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/v2.mean_adj.Z. Accessed on: 2007/08/14
- Temperature Readme
- URL: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/v2.temperature.readme. Accessed on: 2007/08/14
- Temperature Inventory
- URL: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/v2.temperature.inv. Accessed on: 2007/08/14
- Country Codes
- URL: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/v2.country.codes. Accessed on: 2007/08/14 1
- Meteorological Station Location Information
- URL: http://weather.noaa.gov/data/nsd_bbsss.gz (NOAA Internet Weather Service). Accessed on: 2007/08/14