Compiled Rawinsonde Data Set
 

 

Example of a rawinsonde sounding and ECMWF model results for 12 UTC 21 February 1998. (a) shows the model and observed potential temperature and (b) the model and observed winds and model downward turbulent heat fluxes. The diamond marks indicate the observed surface potential temperature (left panel) and observed downward sensible heat flux (right panel) (Bretherton et al. 2000, Fig. 6).

 

Summary of all variables in rawinsonde.nc

netCDF VARIABLE NAME

DESCRIPTION

UNITS

nc{'time'}

Julian day (1997)

decimal day

nc{'sigma'}

Rawinsonde pressure normalized with rawinsonde surface pressure

-

nc{'surf_pres_sonde'}

surface pressure from rawinsonde

[hPa]

nc{'temp'}

Temperature

[Celsius]

nc{'rh'}

Relative humidity

[%/100]

nc{'wtot'}

Wind velocity

[m/s]

nc{'wdir'}

Wind direction

[degree true north]

nc{'surf_pres_tower'}

Surface pressure (from SHEBA tower)

[hPa]

nc{'surf_temp'}

Temperature at 10 m (from SHEBA tower)

[Celsius]

nc{'surf_wtot'}

Wind velocity at 10 m (from SHEBA tower)

[m/s]

nc{'surf_wdir'}

Wind direction at 10 m (from SHEBA tower)

[degree true north]

 

The file rawinsonde.nc contains data from 816 rawinsonde soundings. Click here to see which files have been used or rejected. Read the SHEBA rawinsonde operators comments. Rawinsonde.nc has been created to reduce the number of data by binning the data to fixed vertical sigma coordinates. Note that no detailed quality check has been performed to the data.

 

The data have been binned to 179 sigma levels.
The vertical resolution is 0.002 for 0.7 <= sigma <= 1.
The vertical resolution is 0.025 for sigma <= 0.675.
The default value for all variables is -999.

 

The file rawinsonde.nc can be downloaded by anonymous ftp: ftp eos.atmos.washington.edu, directory pub/roode (netCDF, 4.7 Mb)

 

References
 
Bretherton, C. S., S. R. de Roode, C. Jakob, E. L Andreas, J. Intrieri, R. E. Moritz, and P. O. G. Persson, 2000: A comparison of the ECMWF forecast model with observations over the annual cycle at SHEBA. J. Geophys. Res., submitted 12/99, revised 5/00. Postscript version

Stephan de Roode (roode@phys.uu.nl)
Chris Bretherton (breth@atmos.washington.edu)

University of Washington
Dept of Atmospheric Sciences
Box 351640
Seattle, WA 98195-1640 USA