Compiled historical daily temperature and precipitation data for selected 210 U.S. cities

Cities were selected based on lengths of existing climate records, which start at least earlier than 1900. However, cities may miss substantial amounts of data during their periods of record.

Each file provides available historical daily maximum and minimum temperature and daily precipitation data for one U.S. city. File was named by the city's current active weather station ID (Global Historical Climatology Network, GHCN ID).

Each city may include records from one or multiple stations. Listed latitude and longitude for each city are from the city's current active weather station.

Daily maximum and minimum temperature and daily precipitation were acquired from Applied Climate Information System (ACIS), developed by the NOAA Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC).

The historical observations from ACIS belong to Global Historical Climatological Network - daily (GHCN-D) datasets.

The included stations were based on NRCC’s “ThreadEx” project, which combined daily temperature and precipitation extremes at 255 NOAA Local Climatological Locations, representing all large and medium size cities in U.S. (see Owen et al. (2006). Accessing NOAA Daily Temperature and Precipitation Extremes Based on Combined/Threaded Station Records).

Resources:

• See included README file for more information.
   
• Additional technical details and analyses can be found in:  Lai, Y., & Dzombak, D. A. (2019). Use of historical data to assess regional climate change. Journal of climate, 32(14), 4299-4320.  https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0630.1
   
• Other datasets from the same project can be accessed at: https://kilthub.cmu.edu/projects/Use_of_historical_data_to_assess_regional_climate_change/61538
   
• ACIS database for historical observations: http://scacis.rcc-acis.org/  
   
• GHCN-D datasets can also be accessed at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/global-historical-climatology-network-daily/

- 2024 August updated -

1. Temperature and precipitation records for 2022 and 2023 were added (using the records from GHCN-D at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/global-historical-climatology-network-daily/).
    
2. Note that future updates may be infrequent.

- 2022 January updated -

1. Temperature and precipitation records for 2021 were added (using the records from GHCN-D at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/global-historical-climatology-network-daily/).

- 2021 January updated -

1. Temperature and precipitation records for 2020 were added (using the records from GHCN-D at: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/).

- 2020 January updated -

1. Temperature and precipitation records for 2019 were added (using  the records from GHCN-D at: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/).
    
2. *CITY_ID*.csv files were already filled the missing values (represented with NA) to make to continuous time series from start of record to the end of 2019. *CITY_ID*_fill.csv files from the older version were deleted.

- 2019 June updated -

1. Baltimore (USW00093721) data for 2018 was updated (previously 2018 data appeared to be NA). Original files for Baltimore were removed.
    
2. The GHCN ID for Baltimore was updated to be the ID for Baltimore-Washington International AP. city_info file was updated accordingly.