Index

USHCN Version 2.5 Transition

Since 1987, National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI, formerly National Climatic Data Center) has used observations from the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) to quantify national- and regional-scale temperature changes in the conterminous United States (CONUS). To that end, USHCN temperature records have been "corrected" to account for various historical changes in station location, instrumentation, and observing practice. The USHCN is a designated subset of the NOAA Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) Network. USHCN sites were selected according to their spatial coverage, record length, data completeness, and historical stability. The USHCN, therefore, consists primarily of long-term COOP stations whose temperature records have been adjusted for systematic, non-climatic changes that bias temperature trends.

The National Centers for Environmental Information periodically improves the quality of the datasets maintained at the center and releases updated versions. Beginning with the September 2012 processing, NCEI (then known as NCDC) began using USHCN version 2.5 for national temperature calculations as well as in other products, including Climate at a Glance and the Climate Extremes Index. For additional information on the improvements made to USHCN version 2.5, please visit USHCN.