Import Monthly Time Series

On Import menu of  Data Manipulation form.

• Select ASCII file with monthly data.  Rows have each year, and the months will be in columns.  See caveats below.
• Provide a field name, meeting the dBase requirements, for the values in the table.
• The program will convert the file to a CSV file with the fields Year, Month, and the value.
• The program will convert the CSV file to a DBF file, in the same directory as original file, and open the database file.
• You cannot manipulate the database file until you close the Data Manipulation form

Caveats:

• Looks for first line with "YEAR" and ignores any preceding lines.
• On succeeding lines, must start with a valid year, and then have 12 valid numbers for each month.
• Missing data will cause problems.
• A "T" for the data (such as precipitation) will cause problems, and will cause the values to be entered as a string instead of  numbers, so that you cannot do any statistics.  You can edit the data in Excel, and replace the "T" with a "0" or a "0.0001".
• Values can be separated in the files with a tab, comma, or space.

Sample data sets that work:

• Southern Oscillation Index, from Australia: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/glossary/soi.shtml
• Monthly local climate data (Temperature and precipitation) from the National Weather Service, http://www.weather.gov/climate/local_data.php?wfo=lwx

Once the series has been imported, you can do time series analysis.

Last revised 12/24/2009