Abstract:
American Weather Stories is a historical publication available at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Stories consist of American weather experinces from the hurricane that threatened Columbus and colonial settlers to the peculiar run of bad weather that has plagued American presidents on Inauguration Day; from Americans who documented the weather and climate of the Revolutionary and Civil War eras to those who suffered through the 'year without a summer', the Blizzard of 1888, and the dust bowl drought of the 1930's.
Purpose:
To make a wide range of climatic data available to researchers and the public.
Quality
The L3Q products combine the Level 2 standard data parameters over grid cells of 5 x 5 deg spatial extent for temporal periods of five days and one month. The report for each grid cell provides a number of representative values and their associated weights. The sample of lower level data points with the same representative is called a “cluster”, and its representative is the “cluster mean”. ... Cluster membership is determined by assigning lower level data points to clusters so that that the errors between original values and their representatives are minimized. This constraint prevents the creation of single-data-point clusters.
As a general rule, Level 2 retrieved quantities whose quality indicators are “best” (=0) or “good” (=1) are included in the data that generate the L3Q product. Users MUST read information contained within the two documents below to avoid misuse of the L3Q products in their research.
