Mobile GPS radiosondes from Colorado State University for VORTEX-SE 2017

24 August 2017

PI: Russ Schumacher, Colorado State University 
e-mail: russ.schumacher@colostate.edu
Mailing address: 1371 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1371
Phone: 970.491.8084

1.0 Dataset overview

This dataset consists of atmospheric soundings collected from a mobile platform by the Colorado State University team during VORTEX-SE in 2017.  Data span the period from 21 March--1 May 2017.  Soundings were taken intermittently in the southeastern United States as determined by the weather situation, in coordination with other fixed and mobile sounding groups. 
 
2.0 Instrument Description

The soundings were taken with Vaisala RS-41 radiosondes and processed using a Digicora MW41 system running V2.2.1 software. 

3.0 Data collection and processing

Soundings were collected from a mobile platform in locations in the pre-convective and convectively disturbed environments near deep convective storms in the southeastern United States.  The primary data quality control and assurance was automatically performed by the Vaisala Digicora software.  This includes corrections for the standard known biases of the instrument.  At this time, no correction/adjustment has been made to these data to reconcile them with other instruments and processing software used by other groups during VORTEX-SE.

4.0 Data format

For each sounding, two files are provided.  The first was produced by the Vaisala Digicora software, the second by an R program. 

-- "EDT": Edited data from the Digicora software at pressure levels, with corrections for the standard known biases of the instrument.  Column delimited ASCII format, with the column headings given in the files.  

-- "PNG": Portable network graphics files showing Skew-T log-p diagrams of the soundings, along with standard convective parameters (CAPE, shear, etc.)

5.0 Data remarks

-- Several of the soundings were terminated early, either because of software/hardware malfunctions, dangerous launch conditions, or the desire to move to a different launch site.  Data are included for all portions of the soundings that were collected.