st: need help on reading big ASCII file to make a panel data set on temperature across geographic coordinates

[Jose Ramon Albert <jrgalbert@gmail.com>]

i have a big TEMPERATURE data set

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/308664/hadcrut3v.txt

that pertains to temperature data for 2592 = 36 x 72 geographic
coordinates across
months from the years 1850 to 2010

for year = 1850 to 2010
 for month = 1 to 12
  format(2i6) year, month
  for row = 1 to 36 (85-90N,80-85N,75-80N,...75-80S,80-85S,85-90S)
   format(72(e10.3,1x)) 180W-175W,175W-170W,...,175-180E

the first row in the txt file prior to the actual data,

 1850     1     1    36 rows     72 columns. Missing=-1.000e+30

announces that the data ff it are for month 1 (jan) 1850 which i
would like to ignore, and then the next line
again has a description

 1850     2     1    36 rows     72 columns. Missing=-1.000e+30

which then is succeded by the feb 1850 data... and this goes on and on
to Dec 2010.

i need to construct a panel database that will look like this:

Year Month  Var1 Var 2 ... Var2592
1850   1       DATA read from file
1850   2 ..... (Data read from file)

etc.


can anyone help me out ? i understand this may need the use of
the file, read command, but i have not used this before...
grateful for help.

please respond directly to
jrgalbert@gmail.com

thanks

Jose Ramon Albert
Manila, Philippines

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