Thanks David Jones for Easier Access to Rainfall Data
Posted by Nichole Hoskin, November 13th, 2008 - under News, Opinion.
Tags: People
WHILE searching the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s website, looking for data on rainfall for Melbourne, it became apparent that this site only contained links to data in pdf format with rainfall averages for various and different periods.
I was wanting to see monthly rainfall data for weather stations in the Melbourne catchment. I emailed David Jones, the head of the Bureau’s National Climate Centre, to request the data in excel files. Dr Jones directed me to the Bureau’s climate data online website and told me to convert the PDF files into excel format myself.
Since this site did not provide access to the monthly rainfall data, I replied that I was surprised to find that there was no integration of the climate data and weather stations data sites, so that it is possible to see the complete list of stations and monthly rainfall data at both sites.
A week later, I went back to the Bureau’s climate data online site and found a new link to monthly rainfall data, which took me directly to the weather stations data site.
This is fantastic!
The new link now makes it much easier to find monthly rainfall data and it is now possible to access excel formats of this data.
Thank you very much Dr Jones.
Nichole Hoskin,
Blue Mountains, Australia
Nichole - monthly rainfall data for ALL locations is available at the weatherzone site.
For example here’s Wagga Wagga. It gives current rainfall, averages, highest/lowest temps etc as well as the previous month.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/nsw/riverina/wagga-wagga