Cloud Climatology for Land Stations Worldwide, 1971-2009 (NDP-026D)

Dataset · Wed Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3334/CDIAC/cli.ndp026d· OSTI ID:1394932

Hahn, C. J. ^[1]; Warren, S. G. ^[2]; Eastman, R. ^[2]

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1. University of Arizona, Department of Atmospheric Sciences; OSTI
2. University of Washington, Department of Atmospheric Sciences

Surface synoptic weather reports for 39 years have been processed to provide a climatology of clouds for each of over 5000 land-based weather stations with long periods of record both day and night. For each station, this digital archive includes: multi-year annual, seasonal and monthly averages for day and night separately; seasonal and monthly averages by year; averages for eight times per day; and analyses of the first harmonic for the annual and diurnal cycles. Averages are given for total cloud cover, clear-sky frequency, and 9 cloud types: 5 in the low level (fog, St, Sc, Cu, Cb), 3 in the middle level (Ns, As, Ac) and one in the high level (all cirriform clouds combined). Cloud amounts and frequencies of occurrence are given for all types. In addition, non-overlapped amounts are given for middle and high cloud types, and average base heights are given for low cloud types. Nighttime averages were obtained by using only those reports that met an "illuminance criterion" (i.e., made under adequate moonlight or twilight), thus making possible the determination of diurnal cycles and nighttime trends for cloud types.The authors have also produced an online, gridded atlas of the cloud observations contained in NDP-026D. The Online Cloud Atlas containing NDP-026D data is available via the University of Washington.For access to the data files, click this link to the CDIAC data transition website: http://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/epubs/ndp/ndp026d/ndp026d.html

• Research Organization: Environmental System Science Data Infrastructure for a Virtual Ecosystem
• Sponsoring Organization: U.S. DOE > Office of Science (SC) > Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)
• OSTI ID: 1394932
• Report Number(s): doi:10.3334/CDIAC/CLI.NDP026D; cdiac:doi 10.3334/CDIAC/cli.ndp026.d; ORNL/CDIAC-123
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Cloud Type Amounts
Cloud Type Co-occurrences
Cloud Type Frequencies
Harmonic Analyses of Annual and Diurnal Cycles
Interannual Cloud Variations and Trends
Low Cloud Base Heights
NDP-026D
Total Cloud Cover
cloud type co-occurrences
cloud types over land
cloud types over ocean
harmonic analyses for land
harmonic analyses for ocean
interannual variation and trends land
interannual variation and trends ocean
land-fraction
latitude
longitude
number of land stations
total cloud over land
total cloud over ocean