Climate data rescue 7: Résumé mensuel du temps (RMT)

[Lien vers la fiche source] ### Contents of the RMT The Résumé Mensuel du Temps has been published by the Service Météorologique de l'Indochine from 1949 to 1954, under the direction of the Haut Commissariat de France en Indochine, and has been transferred in 1955 with the same title to the Meteorological Direction of the Ministry of Civil engineering and Communication of the Viêt-Nam Republic (commonly known as Republic of South Viêt-Nam) and published until 1973. During the first period (1949-51), RMT was simply an in folio page (A0) folded in 4, forming a monthly publication of 8 pages (A4) giving: * Page 1: a short summary of the current month weather evolution; * Pages 2, 3 and 4: daily data of 23 stations in Indochina, including 14 stations in Vietnam (from north to south), i.e., minimum and maximum of temperatures, and total rainfall of the day (mm); * Page 5: aeronautical climatology observations (monthly averages of atmospheric pressure, visibility, wind direction, cloud base height) from the following aerodromes: Hai Phong, Tourane, Saigon, Vientiane, Phnom-Penh; * Pages 6 and 7: monthly data on temperature, humidity, evaporation and rainfall for 29 weather stations in Indochina, including 18 in Vietnam (from north to south); * The last page: reproduce every month the map of the Indochinese meteorological station network. After this period, the parameters increase significantly in terms of quantity with the full list detailed in “Type of data”. Next, for a short period, from 1952 to 1955, daily observations of atmospheric pressure and temperature for 6 meteorological stations were presented in the published documents (Saigon, Haiphong, Tourane, Nha Trang, Phnom-Penh, Vientiane) along with quick appearance of dew temperature in 1954 and 1955. From 1955 until 1973, the RMT became a more substantial periodical published in a bilingual Vietnamese/French edition. It is still a monthly publication, containing mainly monthly data, with only daily rainfall data still published. In 1956, aeronautical climatology observations took a new step forward with the publication of atmospheric data with vertical profile as different pressure levels, thanks to the upper air observation of balloons with radiosondes from the Saigon meteorological station. The number of meteorological, climatological, and pluviometric stations also fluctuated significantly due to the impact of the Indochina War (against France) and the Vietnam War (against United States of America). After the end of the war against the Colonial French rulers, observations from North Vietnam stations were no longer published. By 1958, stations in Cambodia also disappeared, as did those in Laos after 1962. Subsequently, RMT only published data from the stations in the “Republic of South Vietnam”, with a sharp decline in the number of pluviometric stations, one of the aftermaths of the intensification of the American War. ### Content of the dataset This dataset contains all the daily meteorological data that have been published in the Résumé Mensuel du Temps en Indochine. ### Meteorological data coverage 1949-1973 NB: * 1964: 10-day records are missing, but the monthly record is available. * 1973: Records for the latter half of the year are missing.