Tools and Data Old

A spreadsheet application is needed to analyze the data. Microsoft Excel is used in this chapter and is available as a stand-alone program or as part of Microsoft Office.

GSOD data is daily average temperature data from U.S. weather stations. There are often 100 years of data available, although the amount varies from station to station. The data is freely available from an NCDC data portal.

Provided by the National Climactic data Center (NCDC) at its Geoportal: http://gis.ncdc.noaa.gov/

Global Surface Network (GSN) data from US weather stations is monthly average temperature and other variables over ranges of years that vary from station to station, but are as much as 100 years of data in most cases. The data is freely available from an NCDC data portal.

A description of variables can be downloaded gsnmontxt.doc ( 2kB Jan12 11). This description file is provided with every GSN order from the Geoportal.