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Tutorial: Accessing Historical weather data through the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) The United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) is a high-quality data set of daily and monthly
records of basic meteorological variables from 1218 observing stations across the 48 contiguous United States.
Daily data include observations of maximum and minimum temperature, precipitation amount, snowfall amount,
and snow depth; monthly data consist of monthly-averaged maximum, minimum, and mean temperature and
total monthly precipitation.
To access data from the USHCN:
1. Follow this link to the USHCN Homepage: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ushcn.html
2. Click “Data Access”
3. Click the “Web Interface” for a graphical approach to accessing the data:
Tutorial prepared for the Project-Based Global Climate Change Education Project, funded by NASA GCCE
Copyright © 2011, Office of Educational Partnerships, Clarkson University, Potsdam NY
http://www.clarkson.edu/highschool/Climate_Change_Education/index.html
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4. Select a state from the pull-down menu on the right labeled “Select a state:”
5. Click “MAP SITES”. Pushpins will appear on the map at weather station locations. Tools on the left of
the map allow the user to zoomed in or out or pan to the proper location. Click on the weather station
site of interest. The options for getting data (“get monthly data”) are hyperlinks directly to the next set
of data choices.
6. Using daily data is best for professional level calculations, however, the amount of data available
requires a significant amount of time to process many calculations for learning purposes are based on
monthly data.
Tutorial prepared for the Project-Based Global Climate Change Education Project, funded by NASA GCCE
Copyright © 2011, Office of Educational Partnerships, Clarkson University, Potsdam NY
http://www.clarkson.edu/highschool/Climate_Change_Education/index.html
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7. From the selections you will see (below), select the specific data you wish to plot (for example “mean
temperature”) or download
U.S. Historical Climatology Network -­ Monthly Data You have chosen site 301185, CANTON 4 SE, New York
Available Plots:
Number of months with data vs Year
Mean temperature vs year
Precipitation totals
Climate variable vs month
Climate variable box and whisker plot
Available download files:
Create a download file of monthly data
Create a download file of data summarized by year (Jan 1 - Dec 31)
Create a download file of data summarized by hydrological year (Oct 1 - Sep 30)
The following screen will appear if you choose one of the download available data options:
Tutorial prepared for the Project-Based Global Climate Change Education Project, funded by NASA GCCE
Copyright © 2011, Office of Educational Partnerships, Clarkson University, Potsdam NY
http://www.clarkson.edu/highschool/Climate_Change_Education/index.html
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Select the data you want by clicking in the boxes to the left of the description. You can edit the time range for
data to cut down on the size of the file, however, data is not available previous to the date initially listed on the
left or after the date initially listed on the right.
Click the “submit” button to access a link to download the csv file.
Click the link provided to download the .csv file.
Tutorial prepared for the Project-Based Global Climate Change Education Project, funded by NASA GCCE
Copyright © 2011, Office of Educational Partnerships, Clarkson University, Potsdam NY
http://www.clarkson.edu/highschool/Climate_Change_Education/index.html
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Follow the directions in the Excel 2007 – 2010 Tutorial for instructions on how to open the csv file in Excel.
Tutorial prepared for the Project-Based Global Climate Change Education Project, funded by NASA GCCE
Copyright © 2011, Office of Educational Partnerships, Clarkson University, Potsdam NY
http://www.clarkson.edu/highschool/Climate_Change_Education/index.html