CLIMATE DATA

The University of Kansas Field Station (KUFS) maintains a weather station at its core facilities just north of Lawrence, in the extreme southeastern corner of Jefferson County, KS.  The coordinates for the weather station are 95⁰ 11' 27.85" W and 39⁰ 03' 5.0" N.  The weather station is situated in a cool-season grassland on a flat ridge at 1088 feet elevation.  A buffer zone of approximately 100 feet, centered on the instrument tower and shelter, is maintained as a no disturbance area and is mowed at a height of 4 inches once a year in late summer. 

The KUFS weather station samples eight atmospheric parameters 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  It utilizes a battery powered Campbell Scientific 21X datalogger that is manually downloaded to a PC once a week.  The datalogger samples the eight parameters every 5 seconds and, on the hour, stores a mean value of the previous hour’s measurements.  The datalogger keeps time year round as Central Standard Time.  In addition to these hourly means, the datalogger records daily (24 hour) minimum and maximum air and soil temperature and the time when they occurred.  It also records the daily peak wind speed and the time at which it occurred.  The eight semi-automated recorded parameters are as follows:

Copies of the raw weather data are available upon request (contact Galen L. Pittman, KUFS Station Manager/Biologist, email: gpittman@ku.edu).  Samples of data (1992-2004) that are available in the current format are provided as Microsoft Excel files as follows:

            All hourly (raw) data for the month of August 2002  (NESA0208_weather_data)

            Precipitation only (on a daily basis) for calendar year 2002  (2002_daily_precip)