Open AccessA Monthly Upper-Air Dataset for North America Back to 1922 from the Monthly Weather Review
Author(s) -
Tracy Ewen,
Andrea Grant,
Stefan Brönnimann
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
monthly weather review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.862
H-Index - 179
eISSN - 1520-0493
pISSN - 0027-0644
DOI - 10.1175/2007mwr2202.1
Subject(s) - radiosonde , climatology , environmental science , meteorology , geography , geology
Upper-air observations with kites, aircraft, and radiosondes were performed in the United States opera- tionally since the 1890s. In this paper, the authors present a reevaluation of newly digitized monthly mean values from the Monthly Weather Review back to 1922. Data from 46 U.S. weather stations are presented with a focus on early kite and aircraft observations during the 1922–38 period. A quality assessment of the data, based on reconstructed reference series, is carried out and the quality of the monthly mean data is found to be sufficient for analysis of variability in upper-level circulation. Anomalies of upper-level temperatures from the reevaluated station data, together with surface fields, are shown for selected periods