Kansas State University Mesonet (KSUMESO)

Information updated on March 2, 2010, 8:38 pm GMT

General Data Description

Surface meterology information are available from sixteen stations in Kansas. The data are provided and quality assured by the High Plains Climate Center.

All stations are Campbell CR10 dataloggers with Phys-Chem Temp/ RH probes, Texas Instrument (0.01") tipping bucket rain gauges, Met One Anemometers, Met One Wind vanes, 107 soil temp probes at 2" and 4" depth, and Li-Cor Slicon Pyranometers (Sandyland has an Eppley). They are mounted on a 10 ft tripod, with wind and solar instruments at 10 ft, Air/RH at 5 ft, and top of rain gauge approximately 15" above ground. For further details see The High Plains Regional Climate Center Web site.

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Data Stream Names

60ksumeso - Kansas Mesonet (High Plains Climate Center): surface met. & radiation data, 60-min

netCDF File Header Description (Data Object Design File)

Measurement Description

Parameters are sampled every minute. The time for the average is the time at the end of the sampling interval.The parameters measured are:

air temperature (C)
relative humidity (percent)
wind direction (degrees)
average wind speed (m/s)
hourly total solar radiation (langleys)
total precipitation (mm)
10 cm soil temperature (C)
leaf wetness
data quality flag

Leaf wetness is estimated from the closest station within the HPRCC Automated Weather Data Network with a leaf wetness sensor since there currently are no leaf wetness sensors at the Kansas Mesonet stations.

Leaf wetness is only available for stations Manhattan, Tribune, and Wichita.

-44444 is a fill value for leaf wetness in stations which do not include estimated leaf wetness data.

The data quality flag consists of 8 single digit flags packed into a long integer, where each position represents a field and the number in position is the quality flag for that field. The fields represented from the leftmost digit to the rightmost digit is as follows:

Digit	Field
1	air temperature
2	relative humidity
3	wind direction
4	wind speed
5	solar radiation
6	precipitation
7	soil temperature at 10 cm.
8	leaf wetness

The values of the flags are as follows:

Flag	Meaning
0	No flags were set for the files
1	estimated with 5 closest stations using an inverse distance weighting function.
2	data is suspect but not estimated from the 5 closest stations.
3	estimated data based on regression methodology.

example1 = value of 102 means that the precipitation was estimated with the 5 closest stations and that leaf wetness was estimated based on regression methodolgy and all other fields had no flags set.

example2 = 11113112 means that temperature, relative humidity, wind direction, wind speed, and precipitation were estimated with the 5 closest stations. Solar radiation was estimated using a regression methodology, while leaf wetness was suspect, but not estimated.

Missing Data Values:

-99999 is the fill value