TITLE: Tribal Environmental Exchange Network [IPS Meteostar]
CONTACTS:
Steve Williams
NCAR/EOL
P.O. Box 3000
Boulder, CO 80307-3000
phone: 303-497-8164
email: sfw@ucar.edu
1.0 DATA SET OVERVIEW
This data set contains 5-minute resolution surface meteorological data
from the TRibal Environmental eXchange network (TREX) of 4 Climatronics
weather stations in the Owens Valley. These data were provided by
IPS Meteostar with the approval of the involved tribes. The data set
contains data for all of 2006. Each file contains the 2006 data for
a single station. The data are in comma delimited ASCII.
2.0 INSTRUMENT DESCRIPTION
2.1 Instrumentation information
All four of these sites use Climatronics instrumentation. The temperature
sensors are aspirated. Dew Point temperature is calculated from RH and
Temperature. Not sure what the RH sensor method is but it not a very sensitive
instrument, especially in low humidity. The instrumentation is at 10 meters
except for pressure and precipitation. These stations are primarily used for
air quality purposes.
Photos of each of the stations are available:
http://trex-network.meteostar.com/cgi-bin/lsr/site_photo.pl
2.2 Station Locations
The station locations are from the NAWS China Lake.
NAME: Lone Pine
LONG NAME: Lone Pine Paiute/Shoshone Tribe-CA
CAMS ID: C1018
EPA Site: 06-027-1018
LATITUDE: 36.595556
LONGITUDE: -118.049167
ELEVATION: 3701 ft
Maintained by: Lone Pine Paiute/Shoshone Tribe
NAME: Big Pine
LONG NAME: Big Pine-CA
CAMS ID: C1033
EPA Site: 06-027-1033
LATITUDE: 37.155556
LONGITUDE: -118.293611
ELEVATION: 4045 ft
Maintained by: Tribal Sites Regional Office
NAME: Bishop
LONG NAME: Bishop Paiute Tribe-CA
CAMS ID: C1023
EPA Site: 06-027-1023
LATITUDE: 37.366667
LONGITUDE: -118.416667
ELEVATION: 4226 ft
Maintained by: Tribal Sites Regional Office
NAME: Fort Independence
LONG NAME: Fort Independence Met1-CA
CAMS ID: C1028
EPA Site: 06-027-1028
LATITUDE: 36.802778
LONGITUDE: -118.118889
ELEVATION: 3799 ft
Maintained by: Tribal Sites Regional Office
3.0 DATA COLLECTION AND PROCESSING
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) uses an automated collection
system which analyzes all of the data as it is collected. Based on conditions
at the site and the state of the instruments, the system may decide to
automatically reject data. TCEQ personnel also continuously review the data and
may decide to manually reject data.
* Rejected data is flagged in various ways depending upon why it was rejected.
* The flags show up in the report as three-character-codes.
* The following are codes that may be applied to data:
o NA - The average cannot be computed until all the measurements are
received. This average will not be available until 15 minutes
past the next hour.
o LST - Lost data. Usually indicates that data was never collected.
This may also be triggered by delays or breakdowns in data
communication between the monitoring sites and the Regional
Offices, or the Central Office in Austin. Try retreiving the
data later.
o LIM - Data exceeds automatic criteria for rejection.
+ For meteorological parameters, this indicates that the
measurements fall outside the EPA guidelines for meteorological
collection of data. This is usually due to a short-term
meteorological condition, such as rapid heating during the day
or extended periods of calm winds.
+ For pollution parameters, this indicates that the instrument
failed one of it's scheduled automatic calibrations or span checks.
Calibrations are performed periodically to insure that the instrument
is functioning properly and the data collected is valid. If a
calibration is failed, TCEQ field operators will go to the monitoring
station to determine why the automatic calibration failed. Once the
problem has been identified and corrected, a fresh calibration will be
done on the instrument and valid data will start being collected.
o PMA - Preventative maintenance. Indicates the CAMS is undergoing maintenance
and data collected is not valid data.
o CAL - Automatic calibration in progress. Calibrations are performed when
instruments are changed or fail a span check and last from 3 to 6 hours.
Non-scheduled calibrations may be initiated at any time by TCEQ field
operators - usually during the course of instrument repair/replacement
or troubleshooting.
o SPN - Automatic span check in progress. This is to check that the instrument
calibration is holding. Span checks are generally performed once a week
on each instrument and last from 2 to 4 hours. Non-scheduled span checks
may be initiated at any time by TCEQ field operators - usually during
the course of troubleshooting.
o SPZ - Automatic span check in progress. This is to check that the instrument
calibration is holding. These span checks are generally performed once
a day on instruments and last 30 minutes. These are normally only seen
if the system detects an instrument problem during the span check.
o QAS - Quality Assurance audit in progress. TCEQ conducts periodic Quality
Assurance audits on each monitoring site. These audits verify the
instrument's accuracy.
o QRE - Data rejected because of failed audit results.
o AQI - Data rejected by TCEQ validators. The TCEQ validators have reviewed the
data and determined that it is not valid.
o MAL - This indicates a general instrument malfunction. This flag is manually
set by a data validator.
o NOL - Instrument is not on line. The instrument is collecting data, but it has
not been calibrated and the data it collects is ignored.
o FEW - Not enough five-minute measurements available to create an hourly average.
There must be 45 minutes of data available each hour in order for a valid
hourly average to be created.
o NEG - The measurement exceeds a lower limit and has too negative a value. It is
possible to get small negative values under routine conditions, but large
negative numbers indicate a problem in the data collection system.
o MUL - This is only seen on NOx monitors. This indicates that the sum of NO and
NO2 measured at a site does not balance with the amount of NOx measured at
a site. This usually indicates a problem in the instrument adjustment.
o NOD - Not Detected. The compound was not detected at a concentration that could
be reliably quantitated. This may mean the compound is present but had
interferences present, was below the detection capability of the instrument,
or not present at all..
NCAR/EOL conducted no processing or quality control on these data.
4.0 DATA FORMAT AND FILE NAMING
4.1 File Naming conventions
Files have names like:
Big Pine C1033 2006 Data.txt
where:
Big Pine is the station name
C1033 is the CAMS ID
2006 is the year
4.2 Data Format
These data are comma-delimited ASCII.
All times are LST.
The parameters and units are provided in the header of each data file.
5.0 DATA REMARKS
6.0 REFERENCES
None.