UMRBPP Meteorological Tower Data Set 1. Contact Dr. Andrew Detwiler Institute of Atmospheric Sciences South Dakota School of Mines and Technology 501 East St. Joseph Street Rapid City, South Dakota 57701 phone: 605-394-2291 fax: 605-394-6061 email: adetwile@msmailgw.sdsmt.edu 2. General Description This is one of the data sets developed for the Upper Missouri River Basin Pilot Project (UMRBPP) which took place in the region surrounding the Black Hills of South Dakota during the period from 5 April to 5 May 1999. This data set consists of data from three meteorological towers in the Black Hills region. 3. Detailed Description The remainder of this document was provided by the data source. UCAR/JOSS is providing these data as they were received, no additional quality control was performed by UCAR/JOSS. As of now there is no information on the latitude, longitude, elevation, or instrumentation at these sites. The data from the tower sites are saved in three text files one for each site: Clinton Ranch (near east end of Deerfield Lake) - Clinton.dat Four Corners, WY (~2 mi N of the store) - FourCorners.dat Sanders Ranch (~3 mi N of Sheridan Lake Rd & 385 Inter) - Sanders.dat Site Latitude Longitude Elev -------------------------------------------------- Clinton Ranch 44 01 26.5 N 103 43 48 W 6190 Four Corners 44 06 27 N 104 06 56 W 6350 Sanders Ranch 44 01.26 N 103 29.31 W 5300 For Clinton Ranch and Four Corners the lat and lon are in deg min sec, while Sanders Ranch is in deg min. The elevations are all in feet. There was a fourth tower site ~13 mi north of Sturgis on land owned by the Homestake Mining Co. Unfortunately, the data were corrupted for the period of UMRB and no data are archived here for that site. Site Latitude Longitude Elev -------------------------------------------------- Homestake 44 35 03 N 103 30 49 W 3100 Lat and lon are in deg min sec and elevation is in feet. Each file has 2689 lines (one line of data for each 15 minute period starting on 4-5-99 00:00 and ending on 5-3-99 00:00) The external temperature sensor measurements (Col 13 below) and the data logger internal temperature sensor measurements (Col 19 below) are offset by some constant value with noise. The temperature values in Col 13 are more accurate. ------------------ The following information comes from an email from Andrew Detwiler. The wind sensors were packaged with a data logger unit and marketed by a company called Second Wind. The anemometers are the 3-cup type; the wind vane is of standard design. They may both be R. M. Young instruments, but I am not sure. Our institute did not purchase and set up the towers originally and we have little detailed information on the equipment. The pressure (Setra Systems, Inc.) and external temp/humidity (Vaisala humitter) sensors were installed by our institute. As far as I know, there was no field calibration of the Vaisala sensors or the wind sensors. I believe the pressure sensors were all compared to one portable pressure sensor, but this portable sensor was not itself a certified standard. I did not do this installation or comparison work, but will pass this email around to those who did to see if they have anything to add. The documentation for the Nomad data logger does not mention any sort of quality control on the data before 15 min means are computed and stored. All instruments are sampled at 1 Hz, and averages and standard deviations are computed from this 1 Hz data. I do not know what the times attached to the averages and standard deviations represent, whether they be the midpoint times or end times of the averaging period. Wind energy people would not be very concerned with this, which is probably why the convention is not documented. Based on the data samples I have looked at, and trying to program the NOMAD, it looks like the times are the end times of the averaging period. That would certainly be the easiest convention for the NOMAD programmers to follow. END of Andrew Detwiler's email -------------------------------- Note: The wind direction at all three sites is suspect. Quantities that are known to be bad or missing are encoded with 999.9 The quantities are stored in columnar format as follows: Col Description --- ----------- 1 - Year 2 - Month 3 - Day 4 - Hour 5 - Minute (corresponds to the end of the 15 minute averaging period) 6 - Total minutes since 1-1-99 7 - Anemometer A (100 foot level) - 15 minute mean (mph) 8 - SD of 7 9 - Anemometer B (~60 foot level) - 15 minute mean (mph) 10 - SD of 9 11 - Wind Direction (100 foot level) - 15 minute mean (degrees) 12 - SD of 11 13 - Temperature (at tower base) - 15 minute mean (C) 14 - SD of 13 15 - RH (at tower base) - 15 minute mean (%) 16 - SD of 15 17 - Pressure (at tower base) - 15 minute mean (mb) 18 - SD of 17 19 - Internal Temp (inside data logger) - 15 minute mean (C) 20 - SD of 19