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Spatial Climate Analysis provides an easy way to view HPRCC's products on a web map.

Users can view any variables available in the popular ACIS Maps suite as a colored contour map, a contour map with overlaid station points, or simply as a map of colored dots. The AWDN dataset provides similar variables with contour overlays generated by gridding mesonet data.

In the Colored Station Points mode, clicking on any station will open the station in the Station Data Explorer.

Enabling the Grid Point Inspector allows the user to analyze climate information for any location in the contiguous U.S. Simply click a location of interest, and the Grid Point Inspector will be opened. The Grid Point Inspector provides linkable analyses in the same manner as the Station Data Explorer.

Information About Spatial Climate Analysis...

• Surface observations are derived from data available through the Applied Climate Information System (ACIS), a joint-RCC long-term climate data service.
• Additional surface observation are provided by the Automated Weather Data Network (AWDN) maintained and operated by HPRCC. This dataset exists only with cooperation from state mesonets and is subject to change at any time. For more information on AWDN please see the AWDN section.
• The SPI and SPEI indices were developed in cooperation with the National Drought Mitigation Center. Additional information about these products is available on the ACIS Climate Maps web page.

Missing AWDN Data
Data collection is handled by state mesonets and HPRCC has no control over sensor and technical issues a station may experience. To combat this, AWDN uses two methods to fill missing data points: Inverse Distance Weighting and Spatial Regression. These methods use the surrounding stations to estimate the missing observation. In most cases these observations will be rectified by restablishing communications but if not the data is flagged to mark these changes.

How stations are omitted from the maps
Regular users will notice that stations sometimes disappear on different timescales, or on different days. There are a few reasons for missing stations in our ACIS products:

• HPRCC automatically filters out stations that have too many missing points in comparison to the number of days being analyzed. This is the most common reason for a "disappearing" station.
• On occasion climatologists will identify stations with consistent biases, or have difficulty contacting a responsible agency to fix a problematic value. These stations are dropped from our map products until the issues are resolved. There are very few of these stations.
• Lastly, stations must make it to ACIS and have data that is not missing. This is normally a consequence of the station maintainer, datafeed, or NCEI. HPRCC is happy to answer questions as to why a station isn't appearing on the maps, and if possible, facilitate .

The criteria for how our software determines how many missing points is too many is outlined below:
• Time <= 90 days: n/6
• Time <= 1 year: ((n/91) * 5) + 10
• Time <= 3 years: ((n/365) * 5) + 25
• Times > 3 years: 40