VOCALS 2008 Sounding Composite 5-mb Resolution Upper-Air Data Set

1.0 General Description

This data set is a composite of radiosondes collected from 5 sounding platforms during the Variability of the American MOnsoonS (VAMOS) Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Study (VOCALS) 2008 project with data collected from 30 September 2008 through 1 December 2008. This project was conducted off and along the coast of northern Chile, South America in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

The data include 678 soundings with 91 soundings from the lower site at Paposo, Chile, 215 soundings from R/V Ron Brown, 47 dropsondes from the United Kingdom Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM) BAe-146 aircraft, 192 from the GPS Advanced Upper_Air Sounding (GAUS) system located at Iquique, Chile, and 133 soundings from the R/V Jose Olaya GAUS system.

This data set contains upper-air sounding data interpolated to a constant vertical resolution of 5 hPa in the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) Sounding Composite Format from stations in the following networks:

• Iquique GAUS Radiosonde Data,
• R/V Jose Olaya Radiosonde Data,
• Paposo Lower Site Raiosondes (RAOBS)Data,
• NOAA R/V Ron Brown Sounding Data,
• FAAM BAe-146 Dropsonde Data,

Section 2.1 contains a detailed description of the format of the composite dataset. See Section 3.0 below for the quality control processing performed by NCAR/EOL on this dataset. Section 4.0 contains references.

2.0 Detailed Data Description

The `native' resolution data for every sounding were interpolated to 5 hPa vertical resolution files. The surface data point was kept as the initial level in each sounding. The first interpolated data point was at the next lowest pressure evenly divisible by 5 and then every 5 hPa pressure level beyond that point to either 50 hPa or the lowest pressure level reached by the radiosonde, whichever came first. The first 15 lines of each file (the header information) were kept without change.

For the interpolation, the software searched for two data points around the desired pressure level. The search was conducted by looking for two valid (i.e. non-missing) data points around the desired pressure level, while also paying attention to the time difference between the two data points as well as their quality control flags. There was a search for the two best possible data points to use in the interpolation. If the desired pressure level was within the original dataset, that data point was used without interpolation.

There was first a search for values flagged as good within some time range (50 sec for temperature, humidity, and wind and 100 sec for pressure; hereafter termed the ARANGE) and the interpolated data point was flagged as good. Failing that, it searched for values flagged as estimated within the same time range and the interpolated data point was flagged as estimated. Then the search went for good values within a wider time range (100 sec for temperature, humidity, and wind and 200 sec for pressure; hereafter termed the BRANGE) the flag for the interpolated data point here was then degraded (even though two `good' data points were used there was a significant time difference between them) to questionable. Then, in turn, estimated values within the BRANGE were used (flag set to questionable), questionable values within the BRANGE (flag set to bad), good values greater than the BRANGE apart (flag set to bad), estimated values greater than BRANGE apart (flag set to bad), questionable values greater than BRANGE apart (flag set to bad), finally any bad values (flag set to bad). This search was conducted separately for each interpolated variable (pressure, temperature, relative humidity, and the u and v wind components.

Thus for each interpolated data point, the quality control flag was set to the worst case among the data points used in the interpolation, except, for each time range apart, the quality control flag was degraded one level (i.e. good to questionable, etc).

The quality control flags should be carefully heeded in these files. While some of the data may look good, it may have been interpolated over large pressure intervals, and thus be suspect.

For each interpolated data point the dew point was calculated from the temperature and relative humidity (Bolton 1980) and the total wind speed and direction were calculated from the interpolated u and v component values. Also, the altitude and time were interpolated using the same data points used for the pressure interpolation. The ascension rate was recalculated based on the time and altitude values from the two data points used to interpolate the 5 hPa data point. Thus the ascension rate values do not reflect the values based on the interpolated data. The latitude and longitude values were interpolated using the same data points used in the wind component interpolation.

2.1 Detailed Format Description

All upper air soundings were converted to National Center for Atmospheric Research/Earth Observing Laboratory (NCAR/EOL) Sounding Composite Format (ESCF). ESCF is a version of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) CLASS format and is an ASCII format consisting of 15 header records for each sounding followed by the data records with associated QC information.

Header Records

The header records (15 total records) contain data type, project ID, site ID, site location, release time, sonde type, meteorological and wind data processors, and the operator's name and comments. The first five header lines contain information identifying the sounding, and have a rigidly defined form. The following 7 header lines are used for auxiliary information and comments about the sounding, and may vary from dataset to dataset. The last 3 header records contain header information for the data columns. Line 13 holds the field names, line 14 the field units, and line 15 contains dashes ('-' characters) delineating the extent of the field.

The five standard header lines are as follows:

The release location is given as: lon (deg min), lat (deg min), lon (dec. deg), lat (dec. deg), alt (m)

Longitude in deg min is in the format: ddd mm.mm'W where ddd is the number of degrees from True North (with leading zeros if necessary), mm.mm is the decimal number of minutes, and W represents W or E for west or east longitude, respectively. Latitude has the same format as longitude, except there are only two digits for degrees and N or S for north/south latitude. The decimal equivalent of longitude and latitude and station elevation follow.

The seven nonstandard header lines may contain any label and contents. The labels are padded to 35 characters to match the standard header lines. Records for this dataset include the following three nonstandard header lines.

Data Records

The data records each contain time from release, pressure, temperature, dew point, relative humidity, U and V wind components, wind speed and direction, ascent rate, balloon position data, altitude, and quality control flags (see the QC code description). Each data line contains 21 fields, separated by spaces, with a total width of 130 characters. The data are right-justified within the fields. All fields have one decimal place of precision, with the exception of latitude and longitude, which have three decimal places of precision. The contents and sizes of the 21 fields that appear in each data record are as follows:

Fields 16 through 21 contain the Quality Control information derived at the NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory (NCAR/EOL). Any QC information from the original sounding is replaced by the following EOL Sounding Composite Format codes:

Sample Data

The following is a sample record of a VOCALS 2008 5-mb rawinsonde data in EOL Sounding Composite format. The data portion is much longer than 80 characters and, therefore, wraps around to a second line. See section 2.1 for an exact format specification

Data Type:                         GAUS SOUNDING DATA/Ascending
Project ID:                        VOCALS_2008
Release Site Type/Site ID:         Iquique, Chile
Release Location (lon,lat,alt):    070 07.84'W, 20 16.25'S, -70.131, -20.271, 32.9
UTC Release Time (y,m,d,h,m,s):    2008, 11, 12, 07:28:23
Sonde Id/Sonde Type:               082025386/Vaisala RS92-SGP (ccGPS)
Reference Launch Data Source/Time: Vaisala WXT510/07:28:27.19
System Operator/Comments:          yan y crist y tim/none, Good Sounding
Post Processing Comments:          Aspen Version
/
/
Nominal Release Time (y,m,d,h,m,s):2008, 11, 12, 07:28:23
 Time  Press  Temp  Dewpt  RH    Ucmp   Vcmp   spd   dir   Wcmp     Lon     Lat   Ele   Azi    Alt    Qp   Qt   Qrh  Qu   Qv   QdZ
  sec    mb     C     C     %     m/s    m/s   m/s   deg   m/s      deg     deg   deg   deg     m    code code code code code code
------ ------ ----- ----- ----- ------ ------ ----- ----- ----- -------- ------- ----- ----- ------- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
  -1.0 1008.7  16.8  11.2  69.2    0.0    0.2   0.2 182.1 999.0  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0    32.9  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  9.0
   5.7 1005.0  17.2  11.5  68.9   -0.7    0.0   0.7  87.7   5.7  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0    60.2  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0
  14.0 1000.0  17.0  11.6  70.3   -0.6    0.8   1.0 143.1   4.7  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0   103.4  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0
  21.7  995.0  16.6  11.3  70.9   -0.9    0.7   1.1 128.8   6.2  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0   145.6  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0
  29.5  990.0  16.2  11.2  72.5   -1.4   -0.1   1.4  87.9   5.7  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0   188.7  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0
  36.7  985.0  15.8  11.2  73.9   -0.9   -0.8   1.2  49.4   5.7  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0   231.6  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0
  46.0  980.0  15.6  11.1  74.8   -0.7   -0.9   1.1  37.9   5.2  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0   274.9  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0
  53.7  975.0  15.3  11.2  76.6   -1.0    0.0   1.0  88.1   5.3  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0   318.4  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0
  62.0  970.0  15.0  11.2  78.0   -0.5    0.3   0.6 121.0   5.2  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0   361.7  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0
  70.5  965.0  14.8  11.5  80.6   -0.1    0.2   0.2 166.0   5.5  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0   405.9  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0
  78.5  960.0  14.4  11.3  81.9    0.3    0.2   0.4 236.3   5.6  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0   449.6  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0
  86.4  955.0  14.0  11.3  83.8    0.5    0.2   0.6 253.9   5.7  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0   493.9  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0
  93.8  950.0  13.7  11.0  83.8    1.0   -0.1   1.0 275.7   5.5  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0   538.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0
 102.4  945.0  13.3  10.7  84.3    1.0   -0.2   1.0 281.3   5.5  -70.131 -20.271 999.0 999.0   582.8  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0 99.0

2.2 Station List

3.0 Quality Control Processing

No additional quality control was applied to this 5 mb resolution data set. For information on the quality control applied to the high resolution data sets that were the basis for the 5 mb data set please see the documentation for the high resolution data sets:

• FAAM BAe-146
• Iquique GAUS
• R/V Jose Olaya
• Paposo
• R/V Ron Brown

4.0 References

Bolton, D., 1980: The Computation of Equivalent Potential Temperature. Mon. Wea. Rev., 108, 171-180.