Custom software for analyzing climate data

We are offering free, custom-written software that assists in the screening and analysis of weather data from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). NCDC data are available from hundreds of US weather stations in the National Weather Service’s Cooperative Observer (COOP) Network.

This software is already being used by the National Park Service’s Inventory and Monitoring Program and the Wyoming State Climate Office (University of Wyoming) for various projects. Since we have been paid for our time in the creation of this tool, we are now offering it free to the public.

Even though weather stations in the COOP network provide some of the longest and most important climate records in the country, they are prone to specific types of errors and data flaws. For example, there are often missing data points in the record, and the measurements for each day have a set of data quality flags that must be interpreted before monthly precipitation totals or temperature averages can be calculated.

If you download the data directly from the NCDC, it looks like this:

This file shows measurements taken every day from 1894 – 2009 at Yellowstone Park headquarters in Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyoming. As you can see, it’s a bit difficult to read.

Our analysis software does several things with this raw data:

(1) It identifies data points (days) that have been flagged as potential problems and assists the user in correcting these problems.

(2) It generates a series of screening plots of temperature and precipitation data. These plots help the user identify outliers or measurements that have been incorrectly entered into the data file. These plots also assist the user in performing logical consistency checks. For example, it is easy to spot situations in which daily minimum temperature is greater than daily maximum temperature.

Here is an example graph generated by the program:

Click here for a more detailed screenshot

(3) Once the quality control has been completed (steps 1 and 2). The program generates monthly and yearly summaries . . .but only when it is appropriate to do so. For example if there are more than three missing precipitation measurements in a particular month, the program will mark the month as incomplete rather than calculating an inappropriate total. Indices calculated by this program include monthly totals and averages, yearly accumulated growing degree days (AGDD 40F and AGDD 50F), the number of days each year with temperatures above/below set thresholds (0F, 32F, 80F, 90F), the last date of spring frost / freeze, first date of fall frost / freeze.

The program has been compiled to run on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It may work on older versions of windows as well.

You can download the program, along with detailed instructions and sample data files here:

Click here to download the COOP climate data screener and summarizer

We are offering this software free of charge, but if you choose to use it, we ask the following:

(1) Please send us a friendly email letting us know that it has been useful. (information {at} YellowstoneEcology {dot} com).

(2) Please send us bug reports and suggestions for improvement.

(3) Contact us if you would like similar software written for one of your projects. We can write custom code that will automate the routine summary and analysis of data. In addition to basic tables and graphs, our stand-alone applications can interface with the R statistical language, making it possible to perform complex statistical analysis from a graphical user interface.