Data Format Description

Site Data

Information about all sites which match your query parameters is in the file 'sites*.txt', where the wildcard (*) indicates a unique identifier for your particular query. Each record in this file contains the following fields:

site identifer

This uniquely identifies the site. The first two characters indicate the data source for the site.

FR French Polynesian Meteorological Service
NZ National Institude for Water and Atmospheric Recearch, New Zealand
SP Schools of the Pacific Rainfall Climate Experiment
TA Taylor's An Atlas of Pacific Islands Rainfall
US National Climatic Data Center, United States

latitude

This is the latitude in decimal degrees; negative latitudes are in the Southern Hemisphere.

latitude

This is the longitude in decimal degrees; negative longitudes are in the Western Hemisphere.

elevation

This is the site elevation in meters.

terrain type

This is the terrain classfication, as decribed below.

0 atoll
1 coastal
2 coastal with orographic influence
3 inland
4 inland with orographic influence
5 unspecified
6 oceanic (oceanographic buoy)

time zone

This is the time zone in hours from UTC.

flags

This is the sum of all data flags valid for this site. Flags have the following meanings:

1 restricted access
2 there are one or more footnotes for this record
4 the location of this site is approximate

record identifier

This uniquely identifies the site record.

record timestamp

This is the date and time (UTC) when the site record was either last modified or added to the database.

Rainfall Data

Rainfall records which match your query parameters are in the file rain*.txt, where the wildcard (*) indicates a unique identifier for your particular query. Each record in this file contains the following fields:

site identifer

This is the site used for this record.

timestamp

This is the date and time of the end of the observation interval. The timestamp is UTC unless indicated otherwise.

period

This is the length of the observation interval in hours.

amount

This is the total rainfall for the interval [timestamp - period, timestamp) in millimeters. The amount can also be one of the following special values:

-1 trace amount (not all sites report trace amounts)
-2 the amount is included in a subsequent observation

flags

This is the sum of all data flags valid for this record. Additional flags may be added in the future, but if at all possible the value of the currently defined flags will not change. Flags have the following meanings:

1 the timestamp indicates local time, not UTC
2 the amount includes rainfall from previous days
4 the amount is estimated
8 there are one or more footnotes for this record
16 the timestamp is estimated
32 the value was flagged in the source data as failing a QA check
64 consecutive values with this flag may contain offsetting errors

record identifier

This uniquely identifies the rainfall record.

record timestamp

This is the date and time (UTC) when the rainfall record was either last modified or added to the database.

Notes

Any relevant footnotes are in the file 'notes*.txt', where the wildcard (*) indicates a unique identifier for your particular query. This file contains the following fields:

record identifer

This is the record (site record or rainfall record) for which this footnote applies.

text

This is the text of the footnote.

record identifier

This uniquely identifies the footnote record.

record timestamp

This is the date and time (UTC) when the footnote record was either last modified or added to the database.

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