Release Notice for Kansas Mesonet Data Rev. September 10, 1998
Platform: sgp60ksumesoX1.b1 (hourly averages) Introduction: Data for 16 surface meteorology stations are supplied by the High Plains Climate Center (http://hpccsun.unl.edu). Data coverage begins January 1993. Stations: Station code latitude longitude altitude (degrees) (degrees) (meters) Colby COL 39.38 -101.07 966 Desoto DES 38.98 -94.93 286 Garden City GRD 37.98 -100.82 866 Hays HAY 38.87 -99.33 610 Hesston HES 38.13 -97.40 412 Hutchinson HUT 37.93 -98.03 477 Manhattan MAN 39.20 -96.58 320 Ottawa OTT 38.62 -95.28 277 Parsons PAR 37.37 -95.28 277 Powhattan POW 39.80 -95.80 365 Rossville ROS 39.12 -95.92 281 Scandia SCA 39.78 -97.78 451 Silver Lake SIL 39.03 -95.70 271 Sandyland SND 37.93 -98.77 564 Tribune TRI 38.47 -101.77 1101 Wichita WIC 37.87 -97.50 379 Note: None of the Kansas sites have been logged with a GPS system, so the coordinates come from the latitude/longitude of the closest National Weather Service cooperative observer site, likewise with the elevation. Instruments: All stations are Campbell CR10 dataloggers with Phys-Chem Temp/ RH probes, Texas Instrument (0.01") tipping bucket rain gauges, Met One Anemometers, Met One Wind vanes, 107 soil temp probes at 2" and 4" depth, and Li-Cor Slicon Pyranometers (Sandyland has an Eppley). They are mounted on a 10 ft tripod, with wind and solar instruments at 10 ft, Air/RH at 5 ft, and top of rain gauge approximately 15" above ground. For further details see http://hpccsun.unl.edu/awdn.html Hourly Measurements: Parameters are sampled every minute. The time for the average is the time at the end of the sampling interval.The parameters measured are: air temperature (C) relative humidity (percent) wind direction (degrees) average wind speed (m/s) hourly total solar radiation (langleys) total precipitation (mm) 10 cm soil temperature (C) leaf wetness data quality flag Leaf wetness is estimated from the closest station within the HPCC Automated Weather Data Network with a leaf wetness sensor since there currently are no leaf wetness sensors at the Kansas Mesonet stations. Leaf wetness is only available for stations Manhattan, Tribune, and Wichita. -44444 is a fill value for leaf wetness in stations which do not include estimated leaf wetness data. The data quality flag consists of 8 single digit flags packed into a long integer, where each position represents a field and the number in position is the quality flag for that field. The fields represented from the leftmost digit to the rightmost digit is as follows: Digit Field 1 air temperature 2 relative humidity 3 wind direction 4 wind speedd 5 solar radiation 6 precipitation 7 soil temperature at 10 cm. 8 leaf wetness The values of the flags are as follows: Flag Meaning 0 No flags were set for the files 1 estimated with 5 closest stations using an inverse distance weighting function. 2 data is suspect but not estimated from the 5 closest stations. 3 estimated data based on regression methodology. example1 = value of 102 means that the precipitation was estimated with the 5 closest stations and that leaf wetness was estimated based on regression methodolgy and all other fields had no flags set. example2 = 11113112 means that temperature, relative humidity, wind direction, wind speed, and precipitation were estimated with the 5 closest stations. Solar radiation was estimated using a regression methodology, while leaf wetness was suspect, but not estimated. Missing Data Values: -99999 is the fill value for all data missing due to unavailable raw data files. Please feel free to report problems and direct questions to: Joyce Tichler (631)-344-3801 tichler@bnl.gov