Readme_upaL4.0

 Date: 03 January 2017 

OLYMPEX Level 4.0 Upper-air upsonde sounding data: visually inspected with QC flags

L4.0 is at uniform 5-hPa resolution for sites listed below.

site type           name                  identifier     lat.  long.   elev   # of       sonde type       
                                                                        (m)  soundings

enhanced           EnvC, BC, Canada      ENVC, 99001    48.46 -123.30    60     71      Vaisala RS92     
enhanced           NPOL, WA,             NPOL, 99000    47.28 -124.21   144     98      Vaisala RS92     
NWS operational    Quillayute, WA, USA   KUIL, 72797    47.93 -124.56    57    162      Vaisala RS92     
NWS operational    Salem, OR, USA        KSLE, 72694    44.91 -123.01    62    160      Sippican Mark II 

GTS resolution data is available at the following site:

 WS operational    Port Hardy, BC, Canada CYZT, 71109   50.68 -127.36    17    160      Vaisala RS92

dropsonde data from NASA DC-8 aircraft:

enhanced           DROP                  DROP, 99002    variable          0     53      Vaisala RS92     

Notes:

- data for each site is provided in two formats (ASCII and netcdf). Netcdf files have "nc" in their filename

- ASCII files contain all soundings in sequential order 

- read_upaL4.f - fortran program to read ASCII L4 data in CSU format

- L4.0 non_GTS soundings are based on L3.0 hi-res soundings

- KUIL NWS site experienced a power failure and has no data from 12Z 17 Dec. to 12Z 28 Dec. 2015

- NPOL site only reported surface pressure to 1 hPa resolution

- The fully QC'ed sounding dataset (L1-L4):
  - Level 1 (all data in common ASCII format)
  - Level 2 (hi-res with APSEN QC processing)
  - Level 3 (checked to see if corrections are needed)
  - Level 4 (hi-res data put 5-hP uniform resolution or gts-res; both with QC flags)

- the dropsonde data was Qc'ed by NCAR EOL 

- the upsonde data was Qc'ed by CSU 

Updates:

- 01 June 2016; duplicate lines were removed from 71109 

- 01 June 2016; netcdf version of all site created

- 11 July 2016: dropsonde level4 data (ASCII and netcdf format created and uploaded to NASA data server)

- 03 Jan  2017: corrected skewt plots created, earlier version had incorrect winds (i.e., magnitude too large
                by a factor of 1.94) 

Refer questions regarding upsonde data to Paul Ciesielski (paulc@atmos.colostate.edu)