GPM Ground Validation Flight Summaries and Flight Tracks Imagery MC3E
Table of Contents
Introduction
The GPM Ground Validation Flight Summaries and Flight Tracks Imagery data set for MC3E provides processed flight summaries from the University of North Dakota and flight track imagery which illustrates the flight tracks of the ER-2 and Citation aircraft used during MC3E.The flight summary data includes sonde maps, radar animations, parameter versus time charts, radar track graphs, and a document concerning aircraft and instrument operational times. The flight tracks imagery includes one animation for May 11, 2011 and 5 minute radar snapshots from the Real Time Mission Monitor (RTMM). This data set is included as reference information in all MC3E ER-2 Navigation and Citation Navigation data set orders.
Campaign
The Mid latitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment
(MC3E) took place in central Oklahoma during the April-June 2011 period.
The experiment was a collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of
Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research
Facility and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA)
Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission Ground Validation (GV)
program. The field campaign leveraged the unprecedented observing
infrastructure currently available in the central United States, combined
with an extensive sounding array, remote sensing and in situ aircraft
observations, NASA GPM ground validation remote sensors, and new ARM
instrumentation purchased with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
funding. The over arching goal was to provide the most complete
characterization of convective cloud systems, precipitation, and the
environment that has ever been obtained, providing constraints for model
cumulus parameterization and space-based rainfall retrieval algorithms
over land that had never before been available.
Further details on GPM MC3E are available at http://gpm.nsstc.nasa.gov/mc3e/. Information on MC3E ARM
is available at http://campaign.arm.gov/mc3e/.
Investigators
Walter A. Petersen
NASA Wallops Flight Facility
Wallops Island, VA 23375
File Naming Convention
The flight summary documents are named with the following convention:
Radartrack_graphs_[YYYYMMDD].pdf
[YYYYMMDD]_summary.pdf
[YYYYMMDD]_sondemap.pdf
[YYYYMMDD]_data_all.pdf
YYYYMMDD_TrackRadar_anim.gif
where,
YYYY = year
MM = month
DD = day
gif = "graphics interchange format", an animated image
*Note: Flight summary documents are only available for select days.
The flight tracks imagery is named with the following convention:
[YYYY-MM-DD]_[HH-MM-SS]_MC3E-[RdNm].png
where,
YYYY = year
MM = month
DD = day
HH = hour
MM = minutes
SS = seconds
MC3E = Mid-latitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment
RdNm = radar name (e.g., KICT)
png = "portable network graphics", a raster graphics file format
The flight track images are composed of NEXRAD radar data displayed on Google Earth images. The radar snapshots are generated by the Real-Time Mission Monitor (RTMM). The flight tracks are displayed over the radar images. The Citation is typically denoted as a blue aircraft with a white flight track while the ER-2 is displayed as a red aircraft with a red flight track. Each flight track image is time stamped (UTC) and is available in 5 minute intervals.
Citation
Our data sets are provided through the NASA Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project and the Global Hydrology Resource Center (GHRC) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC). GHRC DAAC is one of NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) data centers that are part of the ESDIS project. ESDIS data are not copyrighted; however, in the event that you publish our data or results derived by using our data, we request that you include an acknowledgment within the text of the article and a citation on your reference list. Examples for general acknowledgments, data set citation in a reference listing, and crediting online web images and information can be found at: http://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/uso/citation.html
Contact Information
To order these data or for further information, please contact:
Global Hydrology Resource Center
User Services
320 Sparkman Drive
Huntsville, AL 35805
Phone: 256-961-7932
E-mail: support-ghrc@earthdata.nasa.gov
Web: http://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/
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