Directions on US station data plotting and analysis Pages

US Station Data:Plotting and Analysis | Main Help Page | Data |Climatology Plots | Time Series

Time Series Plots

This page will plot time-series of station data over the US.

Variables
Maximum temperature, minimum temperature and (liquid) precipitation. For time averages longer than a day, the temperatures are averaged and the precipitation is totaled.
Stations available
Stations included in the list have a fairly complete time coverage from 1950-1999 and have both precipitation and temperature available. Climate Division values are calculated by averaging all the stations within a climate division. No attempt was made to area weight within a division. Latitude, longitude and elevation will available for each station from the data description web page.
Date Range: Start Date and End Date
Enter month, day and year for start and end date to be plotted.
Season
Enter month and year for start and end of season. For now, you cannot specify a season that extends over Dec 31. This will change. Monthly values refer to Jan, Feb etc and not 30 day averages.
Type of Plot
Mean, anomaly or standardized anomaly. The anomalies are calculated by using the long-term mean from 1950 to 1999 for each day. Standardized anomalies are calculated by subtracting the mean and dividing by the standard deviation of the data (by day).
Y range
The code will automatically select a y range. Changing it depending on the results may make it easier compare different plots.
General comments: Plotting many years at a time will probably yield an unreadable plot. I may add the ability to plot multiple lines of plots so the plot will be spread out. Periods of time when anomalies are close to zero probably means the data was estimated for that period of time using the climatology. It is not correct and should not be used. I will add the ability to plot seasons over Dec 31.I may also add other options including
  1. time averages (monthly, weekly seasonal)
  2. multiple variables/page
  3. draw climatology line on plot
  4. smoothing
  5. draw 1std, 1std etc on plot
  6. pull-down menus for entries
Sample Plot