DYCOMS-II Surface:  HPC North America Surface Analysis Imagery (GIF)


1.0  General Information


The HPC North America Surface Analysis Imagery (GIF) is one of 
several surface products collected as part of the Dynamics and 
Chemistry of Marine Stratocumulus Phase II: Entrainment Studies
(DYCOMS-II) project field catalog operated by the University 
Corporation for Atmospheric Research/Joint Office for Science Support 
(UCAR/JOSS; http://www.joss.ucar.edu/dycoms/catalog/).
The images are produced by the Hydrometeorological Predication
Center (HPC) every three hours and include the surface analysis
including sea level pressure contours, frontal positions, and
some surface stations plots.  The products cover the period from 
1 - 31 July 2001 and cover the region from about 15 - 80 N and 
30 - 180 W.  The products were acquired from the National Oceanic 
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hydrometeorological 
Prediction Center (http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/html/sfctxt.html).
All images are in GIF format.


2.0  Data Contact


Scot Loehrer (loehrer@ucar.edu)


3.0  Product Information


These products contain three-hourly (00, 03, 06, 09, 12, 15, 18,
and 21 UTC) surface analyses over North America.   Inlcuded are 
sea level pressure contours, frontal positions, and station plots.
All the images are in gif format.


4.0  Quality Control Procedures


     UCAR/JOSS conducted no quality checks on these data.


5.0  File Naming Convention


The file names are structured as follows:

surface_yyyymmddhhmm.hpcsfcanal.gif

Where surface is the data type
      yyyy is the four digit year
      mm is the two digit month
      dd is the two digit day
      hh is the hour (UTC)
      mm is the minute 
      hpcsfcanal is the name of the data set


6.0  References


None