Author: Climate Information Branch, Environment Canada
Disseminator: Environment Canada
Version:  3.0E - 1994 Release.  Copyright 1994.
Data Time Span: Monthlys: 1850 to 1993.  Normals: 1961-1990.

EDUCATIONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL RESEARCH LIMITED USE SOFTWARE AND DATA PRODUCT LICENSE AGREEMENT with Environment Canada

Contents:

• Introduction
• Getting Started
• Menu/Toolbar Navigation
• File Menu
• MlyAverages Menu
• Normals Menu
• Utilities Menu
• Export Menu
• Help Menu
• Features/Hints/Bugs
• Links to Other Sources of Documentation
• References

Introduction

The Canadian Climate Monthlys and Normals 1961-1990 CD-ROM is an archive of monthly average climate data and 1961-1990 climate normals for over 6900 active or inactive meteorological observation stations across Canada.  Rapid access to these data is provided by the CD-ROM software interface which contains options for viewing, extracting, and printing the selected data of interest.

Summary of the Climate Monthlys/Normals CD-ROM DOS-based software capabilities:

• View the list of stations by province and region
• Select stations with a click of the mouse
• Displays and prints a user-selected set of climate elements for each month of a given year
• Display reports for one or more selected stations, separately
• Search for specific stations using one or more of the following criteria:
• Parameter: searches for stations measuring the selected parameter
• Province and Region: searches for stations in the specified province and region
• Year: searches for stations that begin, or end with the specified year
• Name: searches for stations who's name begins with or contains specified sting
• Save lists of selected stations as .txt files in order to save time when working repeatedly with customized subsets
• Export data in comma delimited, blank delimited, AES LTM, or AES LTH formats.

Temperature:

• daily maximum, minimum, mean
• extreme maximum and date
• extreme minimum and date
• days with maximum/minimum
• above/below thresholds
• degree-days above/below thresholds
• season of minimum temperature above 0°C
Precipitation:
• rain, snow, precipitation
• extreme daily rain, snow, precipitation and dates
• days with rain/snow/precipitation above thresholds
• month-end snow depth on the ground
Days with:
• freezing precipitation, thunderstorms, hail
• fog, smoke/haze, blowing dust, blowing snow
Sunshine:
• hours of bright sunshine
• daylight hours with bright sunshine
• days with bright sunshine
• extreme daily bright sunshine and date
Solar Radiation:
• daily global, diffuse, reflected and net
• extreme daily global, diffuse, reflected and net
Wind:
• prevailing direction and mean speed
• wind speed by direction
• percentage frequency by direction
• daily extreme wind speed/direction and date
• days with wind speeds above/below thresholds
Soil Temperature:
• daily soil temperatures at various depths
Evaporation:
• monthly calculated lake evaporation
Hourly Elements:
• dry-bulb, wet-bulb, and dew-point temperatures
• relative humidity
• vapour pressure
• atmospheric pressure - station level and sea level
• cloud amount - 0-2, 3-7, 8-10 tenths coverage
• visibility - <1, 1-9, >9km
• sunshine, solar radiation, wind

Getting Started

Ask in the Data Library for the Climate Monthlys/Normals CD-ROM.  Insert the CD into the CD-ROM drive and run the locally installed program cdromcmc.exe.  Push enter at the title screen that appears.

Menu/Toolbar Navigation

Menu choices:
1.File Menu:

• Save Report As - save the currently displayed report.
• Print - print the current displayed file
• Printer Setup - format the print procedure and choose a printer.
• Exit - exit cdromcmc.exe

For displaying monthly average reports.  Choices:

Monthly Averages by Element, Year and Station

User Calculated Means (default 1961-90)

Year-Month Matrix (default 1961-90)

Any choice from this menu will result in the Station Selection for Monthly Averages screen (example below) if a list has not already been specified in an immediately proceeding session.  The stations listed and stations selected portions will originally be blank.  Station lists are organized and coded with a one digit "prefix" according to region (a.k.a. province) followed by a two digit prefix that identifies the district within the region.  To specify region and district, double-click the Region button to bring up a Select Region and District window.  You may then choose the province and district.   If you are unsure of which district your station(s) is located in, then choose the XREF button from this window.  This Station Lookup screen allows you to specify a search string using 'station name begins with' or 'station name contains' criteria.

Unfortunately when selecting more than one station, the software only allows for selection of stations within the same district.  To select multiple stations that reside in different districts, the process must be carried out separately for each district.  To clear the list of selected stations, select the Del.List button.

Once the province and districts have been selected, double click the OK button to return to the Station Selection for Monthly Averages screen.  A list of all stations within the specified region and district will be provided.  If you wish to further reduce this list, you may do so with a period of station operations criterion, modified in the Time Period From and To input boxes and No. years for stations input box.

In the above example, region = 6 (corresponding to Ontario), and district = 615 (corresponding to the Lake Ontario Counties district).   Of the 307 stations in that district, 3 were chosen: Erindale, Toronto, and Toronto Scarborough College.

Stations of interest can now either be selected from this list or the search can be narrowed using the filter criteria (see Features/Hints section).  In the above example, the station selection list was defined as Ontario 02 region.  The selected station from that list was Credit River At Erindale, which appears in the Station Selected list.

If you are going to be using the same stations again at a later date, you can avoid going through the process of reselecting these same stations by saving the stations to a file (suggested extension: .txt).  Double-click the Save List button.  (**Please see Note**).  These station lists can then be reloaded another time using the Get List button.

Report types:

 Monthly Averages by element, year, and stations: will display the climate parameter averages by month per year, per selected station, and per major parameter group.
User calculated means (default 61-90): will display one average for the entire specified year span for each parameter and per selected station.
Year-Month matrix (default 61-90): will display monthly average data in columns with years in rows for specified year span, per selected parameter, per selected station.

The software allows you to change your climate parameter, selected station, year span, and hour (for hourly data), when you are within the report screen.  This saves going back to manually make these changes within the station selection screen.  The following table is a summary of useful keystroke commands to be used within the report screen:
 
 

Table 1: Keystroke and corresponding action for report display screens.

KEYSTROKE + - f b p n s t

ACTION next hour or wind direction's data previous hour or wind direction's data next parameter's data previous parameter's data next station in the list previous station in the list get station list dialog get period of years list dialog

 

You may save any of the above report displays to a file by choosing Save Report As from the File menu (**Please see Note**).  Or if you prefer a hardcopy, you may print the report out by choosing Print from the File menu.
 

Climate normals are defined as a 30-year average of parameter data.  This CD-ROM only contains the normals for the 1961 to 1990 30-yr period, however, other 30-yr periods are manually available using the User Calculated Means selection from the MlyAverages menu.

Before you can display a normals report, you must select the list of required stations in the 61-90 Normal Station Selection window.  For a description of this process, refer to the MlyAverages Menu section above.  Once you have selected your stations and double-clicked the OK button, a report display of normals by parameter per station will appear.  The p, n, and s keystrokes (see Table 1 above) allow you to change the selected station or to see the station list dialog.

You may save any of the above report displays to a file by choosing Save Report As from the File menu (**Please see Note**).  Or if you prefer a hardcopy, you may print the report out by choosing Print from the File menu.

4. Utilities Menu:

• Normal Station Selection  - Brings up the 61-90 Normal Station Selection window, similar to the example window above.
• Data Station Selection - Brings up the Station Selectionfor Monthly Averages window, depicted in the example window above.
• Parameter Selection - Brings up the Select Parameters window, shown below.

 


The element list subdivides the parameter list by temperature, precipitation, wind, sunshine, radiation, humidity, pressure, and soil temperature and evaporation. If you are interested in displaying, printing, or exporting all parameters, then choose the Select All the Parameters radio button.  To reduce the parameter selection, choose the Edit Parameter List radio button.

When editing the parameter list, you may manually check off requested parameters from the Parameter List, or you can select elements from the Element List as well.    If you wish to save your parameter list, double-click the Save Params button (**Please see Note**).  This list may be retrieved at a later date with the Retrieve Params button.  To clear the parameter selection, double-click the Deselect All button.

A cross-reference to the parameter list is provided by choosing the XREF button.  This screen lists:

• parameter numbers used in the program,
• corresponding values used in .LTM and .LTH and other archive formats,
• shows conversion factors (multipliers).
You may save the cross-reference report by double-clicking the File button (**Please see Note**), or you may print it out with the Print button.  For more information on climate parameters and their method of measurement, please see the readme.txt file.
 
• Normals Report Attributes - brings up the Normal Report Attribute Selection window, which allows you to select which statistic to output (among mean, standard deviation, extreme, number of years, and year of extreme), as well as to save and retrieve the attribute selection list.
• Mly Average Report Attributes - brings up the Monthly Average Report Attribute Selection window, which allows you to select the attribute to output (between month - for all reports, wind direction - for year month matrix report, and hour - for year month matrix report).  You may also save and retrieve the attribute selection.
• Configuration - allows configuration of the CD-ROM drive name.

4. Export Menu:

Choices of export format are:

• ASCII format
• comma delimited
• blank delimited
• AES Digital archive format
• .LTM - Long Term Monthly
• .LTH - Long Term Hourly, available only for hourly parameters, data in hourly columns.

Specific descriptions of the output layout for .LTM and .LTH files are available using the software's online help.  ASCII file output layout is specified by the user.

Before selecting either monthlys or normals and the format, you must select a station list and define your parameters list.  Station selection can be done either by using the Utilities menu, or pressing either F8 (for Normals) or F9 (for monthlys), or by double-clicking the Select Stations button in the export data window.  The process for station selection is described in the MlyAverages Menu section above.  Parameter selection can be accomplished either by using the Utilities menu, or by double-clicking the Select Params button in the export data window.  The process for parameter selection is described in the Utilities Menu section above.

Once the appropriate stations and parameters have been selected, you are ready for data export.  An example Copy Monthly Average Data in ASCII Format window is shown below:

It is recommended that you choose to include a header for each station in the ASCII output.  This header, which includes station identifier and name, divides the data for different stations if exporting all stations' data at once.  You may also choose what information to include in each data row.

You have the choice of copying data station by station (Copy One Station button), or copying all the stations' data at once (Copy All Stations button).  If you have large amounts of data (i.e. stations with long operational time periods, or an entire district) then your exported ASCII file can easily be upwards of 20 MB of data which is something to keep in mind if you wish to FTP that file later.  Please see the Hints section for an explanation of bugs and troubleshooting.
 

Generally, the online help is useful in explaining various window screen features.  It is, however, limited in its ability to communicate help because a) there is no keyword search or contents screen, and b) there is no navigable hierarchical structure to the help system.  To get help on a specific topic, you must actually go to the respective window screen, which will contain a Help button or a Help menu option for that topic.

Features/Hints/Bugs

1. Station Selection.
It is recommended that you have a list of the stations whose data you are interested in before coming in to retrieve.  A complete list of stations in alphabetical order is available at http://prod.library.utoronto.ca/datalib/codebooks/e/ec/cdcdt96/datacat/all_stns.txt.  Or if you wish to select stations with filter criteria (i.e. by latitude/longitude, or by active years, etc.), Environment Canada has a station catalogue with intelligent climate station search techniques, available at http://www1.tor.ec.gc.ca/csc/query.asp.

2. Station Selection Cross-reference.
If you are uncertain about the station district, but know at least part of the name, you can apply a string search in the Data Station Lookup window.  Enter the search string in the Search String text box, then press Enter.  The example below searches region 6 for any stations containing the string "TORON" and retrieves a list up to 200 stations long of matching station names.

 

3. When exporting multiple station data.....
This software is not able to export all stations with a user specified year span.  For example, if you are interested in only 1991 and 1992 for all stations in the Lake Ontario Counties district and you proceed to Copy All Stations, you will get ALL of the years for ALL of the stations Lake Ontario Counties district, causing an annoyingly large file to FTP and then sort through.  You can avoid this by copying one station at a time.  So it is a trade-off between handling of large amounts of data and time available to sit and export one station after another.

4. Important Note: due to a bug in the software, any kind of saving (i.e. save report, data exporting, save station list, etc.) is a two step process.  Any file must be saved to the default directory first (typically c:\cmcd\......) and then copied or FTP-ed to the desired destination later.

5. Double-clicking....
Sometimes if you click a button with the mouse and it ignores your selection by jumping to the wrong screen, you did not highlight the button (in white) before clicking it.  For some reason, the software is very picky about mouse clicks.

6. Data flags...

M - data missing
N - insufficient data to calculate value
X - same as N
T - trace
* - greater than zero but less than 1

• The CD-ROM readme file - http://prod.library.utoronto.ca/datalib/codebooks/e/ec/cmcdn90/readme.txt
• Environment Canada Monthly Climate Data and Normals CD-ROM webpage - http://www.cmc.ec.gc.ca/climate/climate_data.htm
• The 1961-1990 Normals data available on the web.  To choose the province go to http://www.cmc.ec.gc.ca/climate/normals/eprovwmo.htm
• A complete list observation stations - http://prod.library.utoronto.ca/datalib/codebooks/e/ec/cdcdt96/datacat/all_stns.txt