Hydrologists and climate scientists supported by Alaska EPSCoR are using climate data from four climate data networks on the Kenai Peninsula. These data will be used to study climate-induced changes in air temperature and precipitation, and landscape changes in the Kenai River watershed. Data are available from as early as 1899 to 2012 for most individual sensor locations.
GHCN Annual (Global Historical Climatology Network - Annual average) is based on original GHCN Daily dataset with values for mean annual temperature and total precipitation being directly calculated per year for each station. Values for Annual Precip were found by summing all non-missing, reported values for daily precipitation within a given year in the dataset GHCN Daily, and values for MAT were found by taking the mean of all daily mean temperatures. Daily mean temperatures were found by averaging the daily maximum and minimum temperatures reported in GHCN Daily.
GHCN Daily consists of seven selected climate values that were extracted and reformatted from original Global Historical Climatology Network Daily (GHCND) data files that were retrieved from the National Climatic Data Center’s CDO (climate data online) database. There are 49 sites on the Kenai Peninsula that contribute to GHCND.
SNOTEL (short for Snow Telemetry) is an extensive automated system operated by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) that is designed to collect snowpack and related climatic data in the Western U.S. and Alaska. SNOTEL locations on the Kenai Peninsula have been in operation since 1980 and include 15 sites on the Kenai Peninsula.
RAWS (Remote Automated Weather Station) data, collected at hourly intervals, was acquired from the WRCC RAWS historical database. RAWS data include air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction and precipitation. There are 14 sites on the Kenai Peninsula.
A complete list of sensor locations, associated dataset and time scale is available in the attached Kenai_Stations.xlsx spreadsheet.
