Data Format Description

Site Data

Information about all sites which match your query parameters is in the file 'sites.txt'. Each record in this file contains the following fields:

site identifer

This uniquely identifies the site. The first two characters indicate the data source for the site.

FR French Polynesian Meteorological Service
NZ National Institude for Water and Atmospheric Recearch, New Zealand
SP Schools of the Pacific Rainfall Climate Experiment
TA Taylor's An Atlas of Pacific Islands Rainfall
US National Climatic Data Center, United States

latitude

This is the latitude in decimal degrees; negative latitudes are in the Southern Hemisphere.

latitude

This is the longitude in decimal degrees; negative longitudes are in the Western Hemisphere.

elevation

This is the site elevation in meters.

terrain type

This is the terrain classfication, as decribed below.

0 atoll
1 coastal
2 coastal with orographic influence
3 inland
4 inland with orographic influence
5 unspecified

time zone

This is the time zone in hours from UTC.

flags

This is the sum of all data flags valid for this site. Flags have the following meanings:

1 restricted access
2 there are one or more footnotes for this record
4 the location of this site is approximate

Rainfall Data

Rainfall records which match your query parameters are divided into multiple files, with each file containing records for one site. Each record in these files contains the following fields:

site identifer

This is the site used for this record.

timestamp

This is the date and time of the beginning of the observation interval. The timestamp is UTC unless indicated otherwise.

period

This is the length of the observation interval in hours.

amount

This is the total rainfall for the interval [timestamp, timestamp + period) in millimeters. The amount can also be one of the following special values:

-1 trace amount (not all sites report trace amounts)
-2 the amount is included in a subsequent observation

flags

This is the sum of all data flags valid for this observation. Flags have the following meanings:

1 the timestamp indicates local time, not UTC
2 the amount includes rainfall from previous days
4 the amount is estimated
8 there are one or more footnotes for this record
16 the timestamp is estimated

Metadata

If your query includes metadata each site, rainfall, and footnote (see below) record will have the following fields at the end:

record identifier

This uniquely identifies the record.

record timestamp

This is the date and time (UTC) when the record was either last modified or added to the database. In addition to these extra fields, any relevant footnotes are in the file 'notes.txt', which contains the following fields:

record identifer

This is the record for which this footnote applies.

text

This is the text of the footnote.

Send comments or questions about this web page to Michael Klatt.

7 February 2007