The large variance in the weather and climate of interior North America demands data that can capture extremes at small time scales and thus daily instrumental data become critical in order to thoroughly assess the potential socioeconomic and environmental impacts. High quality daily meteorological data are also of vital importance for documenting natural variability and anthropogenic impacts on weather and climate. Kansas has an outstanding reserve of quantitative 19th century weather data that have not been analyzed including records from early forts, the Smithsonian, the Signal Service, community newspapers, and weather-sensitive diarists. The goals of this Ph.D. research are to 1) produce an unbiased record of daily, monthly, seasonal, and annual temperature and precipitation data for the central United States starting in historical times and running continuously to the present and 2) develop universal methods of daily historical climate reconstruction that can be utilized in later studies.

     Work on this project is nearing completion. The dissertation, peer-reviewed publications, and all data will be available from this website soon. The computer program developed for this work will also be available for download soon.

Doctoral Dissertation Committee: Dr. David W. Stahle, Dr. Cary J. Mock, Dr. Elliott West, and Dr. Malcolm K. Cleaveland