pvl_readISH
Read text file of Integrated Surface History (ISH) data.
Contents
Syntax
data = readISH(ISHname)
Description
Reads an ASCII file containing one year of from the Integrated Surface Database ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/noaa/ for a single station. Data are copied into a table with columns for each data field.
Requires Matlab 2013b or later.
Input
- ISHname - string specifying the file (including path) containing the ISH data.
Output
- data - table containing ISH data, one row per observation, one column for each mandatory data element. The last column in the table contains a string with the additional data and remarks.
Data columns are as follows (see [1] for definition of each field):
Label | Type | Description (units) |
len | int | length of variable portion of the record |
catno | string | AF Catalog Station Number |
wban | string | WBAN number |
date | string | Date of observation, in YYYYMMDD format |
time | string | Time of observation, in HHMM format |
source | char | Data source code |
lat | double | Observation latitude (degrees North) |
long | double | Observation longitude (degrees East) |
type | string | Report type code |
elev | double | Observation elevation (meters) |
station | string | Station call letters |
qc | string | Name of quality control process applied |
winddir | double | Wind direction (degrees clockwise from N) |
winddirq | char | Wind direction quality code |
windtype | char | Wind observation type code |
windspeed | double | Wind speed (meters/second) |
windspeedq | char | Wind speed quality code |
ceil | double | Cloud ceiling height (meters AGL) |
ceilq | char | Cloud ceiling quality code |
ceilmethod | char | Cloud ceiling measurement method code |
CAVOK | char | Ceiling and Visibility OK code |
visdist | double | Visibility distance (meters) |
visdistq | char | Visibility distance quality code |
visvar | char | Visibility variability code |
visvarq | char | Visibility variability quality code |
temp | double | Air temperature (degrees C) |
tempq | char | Air temperature quality code |
dewpt | double | Dew point temperature (degrees C) |
dewptq | char | Dew point temperature quality code |
pressure | double | Barometric pressure (hectopascals) |
pressureq | char | Barometric pressure quality |
remainder | string | Optional part of record (ADD + REM) |
Example
archive = '..\Example Data'; fname = pvl_getISDdata(35.11,-106.61,2010,archive); % get weather data for Albuquerque, NM dir([archive '\isd-history.csv']) % index of all data in ISD dir([archive '\' fname]) % data for 2010 for Albuquerque, NM data = pvl_readISH([archive '\' fname]); data(1,1:18)
isd-history.csv 723650-23050-2010 ans = len catno wban date time source lat long type elev station qc winddir winddirq windtype windspeed windspeedq ceil ___ ________ _______ __________ ______ ______ ______ _______ _______ ____ _______ ______ _______ ________ ________ _________ __________ _____ 318 '723650' '23050' '20100101' '0000' '4' 35.033 -106.62 'SY-MT' 1618 'KABQ ' 'V020' 30 '1' 'N' 4.6 '1' 22000
Reference
[1] National Climatic Data Center, Federal Climate Complex Data Documentation for Integrated Surface Data 21 May 2014, ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/noaa/ish-format-document.pdf, accessed 5 June 2014.
See Also
Copyright 2015 Sandia National Laboratories