About annual & monthly 9am and 3pm 9 am and 3 pm relative humidity maps

How were the maps created?

Relative Humidity (RH) data are recorded at a network of weather stations across Australia. The data from these weather stations are stored electronically in the Bureau of Meteorology's database called ADAM (Australian Data Archive for Meteorology).

The average RH maps were based on daily 9 am and 3 pm RH data from about 530 weather stations. The daily data were extracted from ADAM and a number of quality control checks were then applied to the data. For example, the data were checked for missing values over the length of the data record.

After the quality checks were applied to the data, monthly and annual 9 am and 3 pm averages were calculated for each of the weather stations. An objective analysis technique was then applied to these station averages to produce regular gridded datasets (each month and annual) covering Australia.

Finally, the gridded data were visualised in a geographic information system and the colour maps created through this process.

Stations used in the analysis

Relative humidity data from about 530 weather stations across Australia were used to create the average 9am & 3pm relative humidity maps. These stations are shown in the map below.

recording stations used in the average annual and monthly relative humidity analysis

Relative humidity metadata

The following metadata summary, and detailed metadata file, provide information about the average monthly and annual gridded RH datasets. For example, information is provided about the format, spatial extents and analysis techniques used to generate the grids.

TITLE: Mean monthly and mean annual 9am and 3pm relative humidity data (base climatological data sets)
DESCRIPTION: Mean monthly and mean annual relative humidity grids. The grids show the relative humidity values across Australia in the form of a two-dimensional array. The mean data are based on the period 1976-2005.
CUSTODIAN: Bureau of Meteorology
GEOGRAPHIC EXTENT NAMES(s): Australia
AVAILABLE FORMAT TYPE(S): ASCII row major, Arc/InfoTM grid export(.e00), Shapefiles.
SCALE/RESOLUTION The resolution of the data is 0.1 degrees (approximately 10km)