Data format for 223 daily time series for the territory of CIS

The data set contains 223 data files in ASCII format named as IIIIII.dat,where IIIII is the synoptic index of a station (WMO index).

Data files contain fixed-length records, 54 bytes, with the line end character. Each record contains 14 fields with a fixed position in the record and a fixed length (see Table 1). Besides, all the fields in the record are separated from each other by character “blank”.

This “dual” record formatting makes it possible to use any of the most common ways of field separation (“comma separate” or “fixed length fields”) in performing data entry into the storage software environment (DBMS), electronic tabular processors, statistical packets and graphical data representation tools.

Records in data files are arranged by increasing key elements: year, month, day.

The record format is described below, in Table 1.

Table 1

Record format of the data files

Field number	Position	Field length	Field name	Notes
1	1-5	5	WMO index of station	Fixed for the file
	6	1	Blank
2	7-10	4	Year
	11		Blank
3	12-13	2	Month
	14	1	Blank
4	15-16	2	Day
	17	1	Blank
5	18	1	TFLAG – group quality flag for air temperature indices	See Table 2
	19	1	Blank
6	20-24	5	TMIN-minimum daily air temperature	In ⁰C, accurate within 0.1⁰C
	25	1	Blank
7	26	1	QTMIN- quality flag for TMIN	See Table 3
	27	1	Blank
8	28-32	5	TMEAN – mean daily air temperature	In ⁰C, accurate within 0.1⁰C
	33	1	Blank
9	34	1	QTMEAN – quality flag for TMEAN	See Table 3
	35	1	Blank
10	36-40	5	TMAX – maximum daily air temperature	In ⁰C, accurate within 0.1⁰C
	41	1	Blank
11	42	1	QTMAX – quality flag for TMAX	See Table 3
	43	1	Blank
12	44-48	5	R – daily total precipitation	In mm accurate within 0.1 mm
	49	1	Blank
13	50	1	CR - additional flag to R	See Table 4
	51	1	Blank
14	52	1	QR - quality flag for R	See Table 3
	53-54	2	Line end character ‘\n’

A fragment of the data file is given below:

20674 2001 12 27 0 -23.2 0 -19.7 0 -17.3 0   8.0 0 0  
20674 2001 12 28 0 -26.5 0 -25.1 0 -23.2 0   1.0 0 0  
20674 2001 12 29 0 -32.5 0 -30.3 0 -26.4 0   0.0 2 0  
20674 2001 12 30 0 -35.3 0 -34.3 0 -32.0 0   0.0 2 0  
20674 2001 12 31 0 -35.1 0 -33.3 0 -31.5 0   0.0 2 0  
--------------------------------------- --------- ----
RECORD KEY    |   AIR TEMPERATURE DATA  | PRECIPITATION AMOUNT
--------------------------------------- --------------

TFLAG, a group quality flag for air temperature indices, is included in the record to keep users aware of erroneous data in the archives that were used in creating a data set. Efforts are being made to remove erroneous values, despite the great time consumption required to refer to initial observation materials (KM-1 books at meteorological stations).

Table 2

TFLAG (group quality flag for air temperature characteristics)values

TFLAG	Situation coded
TFLAG	QTMIN	QTMEAN	QTMAX	Conditions
0	0	9	9	No conditions
	9	0	9
	9	9	0
	0	0	9	TMIN < TMEAN
	0	9	0	TMIN < TMAX
	9	0	0	TMEAN < TMAX
	0	0	0	TMIN < TMEAN < TMAX
1	0	0	9	If at least one of the following relations is violated: TMIN < TMEAN TMEAN < TMAX TMIN < TMAX
	0	9	0
	9	0	0
	0	0	0
9	9	9	9	-

Table 3

QTMIN, QTMEAN, QTMAX, and QR values

Q- flags	Values of Q-flags
0	The value is reliable
9	The value is rejected or no observations were made.

Table 4

CR values

CR
0	Measured precipitation amount equal to or higher than 0.1 mm
1	Precipitation measured for a few days
2	Precipitation measurements were made, but no precipitation occurred (R = 0)
3	Only precipitation traces were observed (< 0.1 mm) R = 0
9	The value is rejected or no observations were made.

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