Quality control for the basic Mexican climatological database

摘要

The Mexican National climatic network comprises 5,575 stations throughout the country. From them, 300 stations constitute the basic climatic network, used internationally in global circulation models and in regional studies such as the Tehuantepec gyre, the Mexican monsoon, easterly waves over the Yucatan peninsula, and the advance of the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone. This paper reports the quality control software written to enlarge the database period of the basic climatic network, and the design of a user-friendly interface incorporated into a CD. The database includes daily rainfall, evaporation, minimum, maximum and observed temperature, sky condition, haze, hail, and electric storm. The period was extended to the beginning of operation of each station, roughly since 1893, till 1998. The complete data set was captured twice in order to keep the percentage of information error below 2%. Afterwards a climatic quality control procedure was applied to remove or modify wrong numbers in the original paper records. This includes minimum and maximum ranges over the daily values of rainfall, evaporation, and temperature, and thresholds in lumped monthly precipitation, evaporation, and temperature. The CD produced contains a system to extract the validated information by station, region, and state, by selecting an area and period through the capabilities of a GIS. The user-friendly integrated system has a quick access and response to queries times, it can perform climatic computations such as averages, probabilities, etc., keeps the safety of the data, and incorporates geo-referenced information.