NOAA Regional Surface Data (FIFE)

The FIFE Staff Science effort included the acquisition, processing and archiving of meteorological parameters of the atmosphere above the FIFE study area, which would furnish surface meteorological parameters from hourly reporting network for the FIFE area, and provide input data and/or verification data for numerical simulation models. Though the measurements presented in this data set were not taken precisely at the FIFE site, it is hypothesized that they present a representative horizontal cross-section of meteorological variables and sky conditions in and around the site.

It is also realized that many of the variables presented in this data set are somewhat subjective and dependent on the skill (and biases) of the observer, such as estimates of cloud amount and height. The NOAA regional surface reports were extracted from the NOAA operational analysis system and transmitted to the FIS. This contained hourly surface meteorological data from selected stations as received from NESDIS for FIFE.