1 / 6

Climate Data Rescue for the Hawaii

Comprehensive and systematic collection of daily rainfall data became available since 1905Data sources include sugar plantations, pineapple growers, ranchers, irrigation companies, Honolulu Board of Water Supply, NWS, USGS, and private citizens Over 1,900 rain gages with different record lengths from six Hawaiian Islands (Kauai, Oahu, Maui, Lanai, Molokai, and Hawaii)Most data is either in the original reports (hand written or computer printout) or in the published documents.

pelham
Download Presentation

Climate Data Rescue for the Hawaii

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

    1. Climate Data Rescue for the Hawaii Pao-Shin Chu, Sean Newsome, Ying R. Chen Hawaii State Climate Office Department of Meteorology University of Hawaii Honolulu, HI To be presented at CDMP Workshop, Nov 4-5, 2009

    2. Comprehensive and systematic collection of daily rainfall data became available since 1905 Data sources include sugar plantations, pineapple growers, ranchers, irrigation companies, Honolulu Board of Water Supply, NWS, USGS, and private citizens Over 1,900 rain gages with different record lengths from six Hawaiian Islands (Kauai, Oahu, Maui, Lanai, Molokai, and Hawaii) Most data is either in the original reports (hand written or computer printout) or in the published documents

    3. State Key Number (SKN) for each rain gage was created in 1950s but many gages have been discontinued or added. Some gage have more than one SKN or no number at all. Once inventoried, quality checked, filled, and digitized, these data sets will allow studies of long-term climate changes in rainfall and extreme events in the Pacific Ocean. Reliable daily rainfall records for other tropical Pacific islands are relatively short or sparse.

    4. Proposed Tasks • Data inventory and updating (compile and catalog all historical daily rainfall records; identify SKN for each gage, label manually SKN on each sheet to facilitate keying process) • Metadata (identify latitude, longitude, elevation, station name, observer name, SKN, data length, and data format in spreadsheets; use ArcGIS DEM to determine gage elevation if necessary; note any relocation and change in observers or instruments) • Data transmission (handle, pack, and ship data in increment to a contractor for scanning and digitizing)

    5. Fig. 1. Computer recorded daily records for January 1989, from the Kekaha Sugar Company, Kauai. State Key Numbers are listed at the top of each column, site names are located below. Each number in the entry indicates a daily reading and monthly totals in inches are located two rows from the bottom.

    6. Fig. 2. Daily rainfall records for January 1989 from Lihue Sugar Plantation. Missing records such as state key number and observer have to be identified prior to the keying process. Identified state key numbers are manually labeled in red above each site. Also note that state key number for one gage (M-8) has not been assigned. No footnotes or key are available to determine the meaning of the dash line used but it looks like “no observations for the weekend” for some gages.

    7. Fig. 3. An unknown gage in Hawaii for June 1988. Partial daily rainfall and temperature readings are given. It is undistinguishable if only days when rain fell the gage was checked. Blank entry under the rainfall column probably indicates zero rainfall value because there were readings for temperatures for that day. There was no reading for the first six days of the month.

More Related