Historical wind data at Alaska airports, 1980-2019

These wind speed and direction data are the underlying data displayed in the interactive webtool at http://snap.uaf.edu/tools/airport-winds. Original wind speed/direction observations were made by Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) and the Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS) stations, and we accessed these data via the Iowa Environmental Mesonet (IEM). These observations were hourly in most cases, and we filtered data to routine measurements (nearest to clock hour) where measurements were more frequent than hourly to generate a true hourly dataset, save for periods of missing data. We used data from 166 weather stations located across Alaska, selected from a pool of 185 stations available in the IEM database for 1980-2019. For inclusion in the app and this dataset, a station must have a reasonably complete record, and must have begun measurements before June 6, 2010. We applied a spike-filtering algorithm to detect spurious spikes and dips, and a changepoint detection plus quantile mapping adjustment to statistically account for the possibility of sensors changing location, height, or surroundings such that the long term (month-scale) wind regimes were affected. **Methodology** --- All hourly ASOS/AWOS wind speed and direction data available via the Iowa Environmental Mesonet AK ASOS network were accessed and assessed for completeness (185 stations), and 166 of those stations were determined to be sufficiently complete for climatological analysis. Those data were cleaned to produce regular hourly data, and adjusted via a combination of changepoint analysis and quantile mapping to correct for potential changes in sensor location and height. **Attribute Description** --- ts: timestamp (YYYY-mm-dd HH:MM:SS) ws: wind speed (mph) wd: wind direction (degrees) Station identifiers used for locations is available at: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/weather/asos/?state=AK