Precipitation:

Included in the precipitation files are time series 
of rain rate, standard deviation, and percent time 
raining. Precipitation has units of millimeters per 
hour and is measured at a height of approximately 
3.0 meters above ground level. (Instrument height 
is shown as a negative depth in data files).

The Kwajalein meteorological station has two rain
sensors, and these data are in separate files with
rain1 and rain2 prefixes.

To reduce instrumental noise, internally recorded 
1-minute rain accumulation values are smoothed with a 
16-minute Hanning filter upon recovery. These smoothed 
data are then differenced at 10-minute intervals and 
converted to rain rates in mm hr-1. The resultant rain 
rate values are centered at times coincident with other 
10-minute data (0000, 0010, 0020...). For further 
information see 

Serra, Y.L., P.A'Hearn, H.P. Freitag, and M.J. McPhaden, 
2001: ATLAS self-siphoning rain gauge error estimates. 
J. Atmos. Ocean. Tech., 18, 1989-2002.

For detailed information about sampling and sensors, 
see these two web pages:

  http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/proj_over/sensors.shtml

  http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/proj_over/sampling.html

For general information about the TAO Array, see

McPhaden, M.J., A.J. Busalacchi, R. Cheney, J.R. Donguy,
K.S. Gage, D. Halpern, M. Ji, P. Julian, G. Meyers,
G.T. Mitchum, P.P. Niiler, J. Picaut, R.W. Reynolds,
N. Smith, K. Takeuchi, 1998: The Tropical Ocean-Global
Atmosphere (TOGA) observing system:  A decade of
progress. J. Geophys. Res., 103, 14,169-14,240.

  http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/mcph1720/abstract.shtml

In precipitation files, you will find data quality and
source codes to the right of the data.

Using the quality codes you can tune your analysis to 
trade-off between quality and temporal/spatial coverage. 


Quality Code Definitions:

0 = datum missing

1 = highest quality; Pre/post-deployment calibrations agree to within
sensor specifications.  In most cases only pre-deployment calibrations have
been applied

2 = default quality; Pre-deployment calibrations applied.  Default
value for sensors presently deployed and for sensors which were either not
recovered or not calibratable when recovered.

3 = adjusted data; Pre/post calibrations differ, or original data do
not agree with other data sources (e.g., other in situ data or climatology),
or original data are noisy.  Data have been adjusted to correct for error.

4 = lower quality; Pre/post calibrations differ, or data do not agree
with other data sources (e.g., other in situ data or climatology), or data
are noisy.  Data could not be confidently adjusted to correct for error.

5 = sensor or tube failed


Source code definitions:

    0 - No Sensor, No Data 
    1 - Real Time (Telemetered Mode)
    2 - Derived from Real Time
    3 - Temporally Interpolated from Real Time
    4 - 
    5 - Recovered from Instrument RAM (Delayed Mode)
    6 - Derived from RAM
    7 - Temporally Interpolated from RAM