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NOAA SSOD Guide: Daily UTC Station Data

Use the NOAA SSOD Explorer to find global stations, analyze daily UTC-aligned weather observations, and export data.

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Open the SSOD Explorer

Quick start

1. Open the explorer, choose a country, and set a date window of up to 5 years.
2. Select a map marker or double-click a station-table row.
3. Compare daily summaries, temperatures, and precipitation in Dashboard.
4. Export the displayed data to CSV.

1. Introduction

The SSOD Explorer is an interactive dashboard for exploring NOAA’s Synoptic Summary of the Day (SSODv2) data. It provides daily weather records from thousands of stations worldwide. Uniquely, SSOD aggregates data strictly by the UTC calendar day (00:00 to 23:59 UTC), rather than local climatological days, making it ideal for synchronous global comparisons.

2. Global Navigation (Sidebar)

The sidebar on the left controls the global view of the application.

• Select Country: Filter the displayed stations by country. Leave empty to see all stations.
• Select Date Selection: Define the “Global Window” for analysis.

3. Main Navigation Tabs

The application features three main tabs at the top:

Map View

Interactive map view showing global SSOD stations.

The default view is an interactive map showing available weather stations.

• Blue Dots: Represent stations available within your selected filters.
• Selection: Click any blue dot to select a station.

Stations Info

A tabular listing of all available stations. This view is useful for browsing the full station catalog.

• Double-Click: Double-click any row to load that station’s data and navigate directly to the Dashboard.

Dashboard

The SSOD Dashboard for Beijing Daxing Intl Airport showing temperature, precipitation, and wind plots.

The Dashboard displays detailed data for a selected station. It only becomes active after selecting a station from the map or double-clicking a row in the Stations Info table.

Dashboard Header

• Station Info: Name, ID, Country, Elevation, and Data Period.
• Export CSV: Download the parsed data for the currently viewed period.

Dashboard Sub-Tabs

1. Plots: Visualizations for temperature, precipitation, and wind.
2. Data: Provides raw data access with a sortable table and CSV export.

4. Parameter Reference

SSOD provides daily summaries. Note that SSOD lacks explicit quality control string flags; it provides measurement counts instead. Users must manually apply physical limits to identify anomalies.

Column Name	Definition	Unit
date	Date	YYYY-MM-DD (UTC)
temp_mean	Average Temperature	°C
temp_max	Maximum Temperature	°C
temp_min	Minimum Temperature	°C
precip	Total Precipitation	mm
wind_speed	Average Wind Speed	m/s
wind_gust	Maximum Wind Gust	m/s
sea_level_pressure	Sea Level Pressure	hPa

5. Troubleshooting and quality checks

• Missing Quality Flags: Unlike GHCN, SSOD does not have QC flags. Watch for non-physical values.
• UTC Alignment: Remember that a “day” in this dataset runs from 00:00 to 23:59 UTC, which may straddle two local days depending on your timezone.