Edited synoptic cloud reports from ships and land stations over the globe, 1982--1991
- Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States). Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences
- Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States). Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences
- Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States). Dept. of Astrophysical, Planetary and Atmospheric Sciences
Surface synoptic weather reports for the entire globe for the 10-year period from December 1981 through November 1991 have been processed, edited, and rewritten to provide a data set designed for use in cloud analyses. The information in these reports relating to clouds, including the present weather information, was extracted and put through a series of quality control checks. Correctable inconsistencies within reports were edited for consistency, so that the ``edited cloud report`` can be used for cloud analysis. Cases of ``sky obscured`` were interpreted by reference to the present weather code as to whether they indicated fog, rain or snow and were given appropriate cloud type designations. Nimbostratus clouds were also given a special designation. Changes made to an original report are indicated in the edited report so that the original report can be reconstructed if desired. While low cloud amount is normally given directly in the synoptic report, the edited cloud report also includes the amounts, either directly reported or inferred, of middle and high clouds, both the non-overlapped amounts and the ``actual`` amounts. Since illumination from the moon is important for the adequate detection of clouds at night, both the relative lunar illuminance and the solar altitude are given; well as a parameter that indicates whether our recommended illuminance criterion was satisfied. This data set contains 124 million reports from land stations and 15 million reports from ships. Each report is 56 characters in length. The archive consists of 240 files, one file for each month of data for land and ocean separately. With this data set a user can develop a climatology for any particular cloud type or group of types, for any geographical region and any spatial and temporal resolution desired.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States). Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-96OR22464
- OSTI ID:
- 225054
- Report Number(s):
- ORNL/CDIAC-77; NDP-026B; ON: DE96010015
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: DN: Environmental Sciences Division Publication No. 4367; PBD: Feb 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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