[Babase] weather station abbreviations and times

kfenn kfenn at princeton.edu
Thu Jan 15 14:48:08 EST 2009


Jeanne and Susan,

Can Karl and I get your input on the following weather data structure 
questions:

We have the following weather station names listed in our database 
currently.  Some of the names are quite cumbersome so an abbreviation 
would be preferable (with the coding defined in a support table of 
station locations, especially the A vs B locations that show up a few 
times).  I'm going to propose the following codes for each station.  
Please let me know if these would be acceptable.  I think the Baboon 
Camp locations are particularly confusing and I'm not sure I've coded 
them correctly to make appropriate distinctions ....mainly because I 
probably don't know enough about them. 

Anyway, the convention I've used it that the first character signifies 
the location, the second is for the A or B designation and the third is 
to distinguish the Upper and Lower gauges we used for a while.


Baboon Camp A                  CA
Baboon Camp B                  CB     
Baboon Camp B: lower gauge         CBL  (not really sure what to do with 
the upper and lower ones here...do you want them to show up separately?
Baboon Camp B: upper gauge         CBU
Group Ranch Campsite A               RA
Group Ranch Campsite B               RB
Ol Tukai                                       O
(blank)                        There are a number of blank stations from 
the 70s.  How to code these or do you think you can recall their locations?


Another question:  we have a number of blank times for some early 
precipitation readings.  The data type doesn't really lend itself to 
using NULLS, so is there a time that would be acceptable for input for 
these readings?  Were readings typically done at one time of the day 
(perhaps early morning) so  you would feel comfortable populating this 
with 06:00 or something other than NULLS?


Thanks,
Tabby

-- 
Tabby Fenn
Research Assistant

Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
401 Guyot Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ  08544

609 258-6898 (Ph)
609 258-2712 (Fx)



More information about the Babase mailing list