Enhanced Hourly Wind Station Data for the Contiguous United States

Description

U.S. Enhanced Hourly Wind Station Data is digital data set DSI-6421, archived at the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI; formerly National Climatic Data Center, NCDC). During earlier work at NCDC, it was noted that anemometer elevations at U.S. weather stations (for which metadata related to anemometer height was available) varied widely with time. Between 1931 and 2000, there were up to 12 significant anemometer height changes at some of these stations, and on average there was one change per decade at any station with more than 10 years of record. For example, at Los Angeles International Airport, the anemometer height changed 4 times during the 60 years, varying from 59 ft to 20 ft, while at Edwards Air Force Base, the anemometer height was changed 10 times and varied from 13 ft to 75 ft. Therefore, the elevation homogenization of the near-surface wind time series is a necessary pre-requisite for any climatological assessments. This was done at NCDC, creating the DSI-6421 data set. Stations were included in DSI-6421 on a year-by-year basis, depending upon the availability of anemometer metadata and the number of observations made during a year. The earliest data was from 1931, with very few stations. The number of stations increased during World War II to about 200, decreased briefly after the war, and increased to about 350 during the period 1948-1972 because most first-order (primary) stations qualified for inclusion. After 1972, as the importance of metadata was more widely recognized, the number of qualified stations rose to near 1000 by 1985, and continued at about that number through year 2000. The formulae used were U10g = Ua log[(10-Hsnod)/z0]/log[(Ha - Hsnod)/z0], and U10s = Ua log[10/z0]/log[(Ha - Hsnod)/z0], where z0 is the surface roughness (a function of the presence of snow cover at the site); Hsnod is the snow depth; Ha is the anemometer height above the ground; Ua is the wind speed at the anemometer height; U10g is the speed at 10 m above the ground; and U10s is the speed at 10 m above the surface.

Resources

Name Format Description Link
0 The information provided on this page seeks to define how the GCMD Keywords are structured, used and accessed. It also provides information on how users can participate in the further development of the keywords. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/gcmd/global-change-master-directory-gcmd-keywords
0 Landing page for the dataset. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/metadata/geoportal/rest/metadata/item/gov.noaa.ncdc:C00391/html
0 Data in this archival information package are not currently available for public download from NCEI. Please contact NCEI Information Services directly for access to these data. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/contact
0 NCEI home page with information, data access and contact information. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov
33 Data documentation manual from December 12, 2002, published by the National Centers for Environmental Information. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/documentlibrary/tddoc/td6421.pdf
0 The information provided on this page seeks to define how the GCMD Keywords are structured, used and accessed. It also provides information on how users can participate in the further development of the keywords. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/gcmd/global-change-master-directory-gcmd-keywords
33 Paper from conference presentation (13th AMS Conf. Appl. Clim., 2002) by Groisman and Barker describing dataset. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/metadata/documents/C00391-6421_01.pdf
0 The information provided on this page seeks to define how the GCMD Keywords are structured, used and accessed. It also provides information on how users can participate in the further development of the keywords. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/gcmd/global-change-master-directory-gcmd-keywords
0 The information provided on this page seeks to define how the GCMD Keywords are structured, used and accessed. It also provides information on how users can participate in the further development of the keywords. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/gcmd/global-change-master-directory-gcmd-keywords
0 The information provided on this page seeks to define how the GCMD Keywords are structured, used and accessed. It also provides information on how users can participate in the further development of the keywords. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/gcmd/global-change-master-directory-gcmd-keywords
0 The information provided on this page seeks to define how the GCMD Keywords are structured, used and accessed. It also provides information on how users can participate in the further development of the keywords. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/gcmd/global-change-master-directory-gcmd-keywords

Tags

  • vertical location
  • wind direction
  • united states of america
  • weather stations/networks
  • land surface
  • altitude
  • national climatic data center
  • nesdis
  • in situ/laboratory instruments
  • surface winds
  • anemometer height above the ground
  • atmosphere
  • continent
  • noaa
  • ground stations
  • north america
  • station height
  • u.s. department of commerce
  • earth science
  • doc/noaa/nesdis/ncei
  • wind speed
  • aws
  • asos
  • anemometers
  • automated weather observing system
  • recorders/loggers
  • doc/noaa/nesdis/ncdc
  • awos
  • atmospheric winds
  • in situ land-based platforms
  • national centers for environmental information
  • automated weather system
  • automated surface observing system

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Categories