Meteorological Data
Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS)
The Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) accessed through Iowa State University provides observations of meteorological conditions. (Data-download page)
Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC)
This website provides meteorological data including temperature, humidity, precipitation, and wind direction and speed.
Go to the MRCC website. Register at this website. After you log in, practice using this website.
Click “Select Daily Station” and find the weather station that is closest to your area of interest by doing the following
Click “Find a Station > Next”
Select “Illinois” under the State drop-down menu.
Select the station that has relatively long data records. For example “ORD”, which represents the O'Hare International Airport.
You could then select “Period of Record”, or “30 Years”. Choose one climate element, for example “Average Mean Temperature”. Click “Get Climate Data”
You could also select “Hourly-Observed Data > Daily > Multi-station daily”. Select “Illinois”, then “Last 7 Days”. Click “Get Climate Data”. If you want to save the data, click “Data CSV Version” from the menu on the left hand side of the window.
You could then compare your observed weather data with them.
You could also explore “Charts and Graphs” under the main menu of MRCC. For example, try “Thermograph” and "Wind Rose".
Spatial Synoptic Classification (SSC)
Website: http://sheridan.geog.kent.edu/ssc.html
Read the introduction about SSC at the website.
Go through the References listed at the bottom of the webpage, and see how SSC has been applied in other people’s research.
Practice analyzing SSC data
Select “Weather Type Probabilities by Day”
Select a SSC station of interest (e.g., ORD, or IND)
http://sheridan.geog.kent.edu/ssc.html for the list of available cities
Copy the data to Excel
Use Excel for some basic analyses and make some plots.
E.g., calculate the number of days for each SSC weather type in each year. Then analyze the trend.