GPM Ground Validation Oklahoma Climatological Survey Mesonet MC3E

Table of Contents

Introduction

The GPM Ground Validation Oklahoma Climatological Survey Mesonet data were collected during MC3E in central Oklahoma during the April-June 2011 period. Collected by a network of Mesonet weather stations, this dataset is composed of 15 minute and 5 minute files with one file per site per day in mts (ASCII) format. Various instruments are located at each Mesonet site. Multiple parameters found in this dataset include relative humidity, air temperature, wind speed and direction, precipitation and calibrated soil moisture.

The Midlatitude 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 overarching 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 parameterizations 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/.

The Oklahoma Mesonet is a world-class network of environmental monitoring stations. The network was designed and implemented by scientists at the University of Oklahoma (OU) and at Oklahoma State University (OSU). The Oklahoma Mesonet consists of 120 automated stations covering Oklahoma. There is at least one Mesonet station in each of Oklahoma's 77 counties. At each site, the environment is measured by a set of instruments located on or near a 10-meter-tall tower. The measurements are packaged into "observations" every 5 minutes, then the observations are transmitted to a central facility every 5 minutes, 24 hours per day year-round.¹

Additional information on the Mesonet weather station and the instruments located at a Mesonet site is available at http://www.mesonet.org/index.php.

1. Oklahoma Mesonet website. "About the Mesonet" May 31, 2013. http://www.mesonet.org/index.php/site/about/about_the_mesonet.

Oklahoma Climatological Survey
120 David L. Boren Blvd., Suite 2900
Norman, OK 73072

Data files are of the form:

mc3e_[5|15]min_yyyymmdd<site>.mts

where

mc3e = Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment
min = minute
yyyymmdd = year, month, day
site = site of the Mesonet station (http://www.mesonet.org/index.php/site/sites/station_site_id_map)
mts = MPEG Transport Stream

The GPM Ground Validation Oklahoma Climatological Survey Mesonet dataset consists of mts format files composed of 15 minute and 5 minute files with one file per site per day. Data can be read as ASCII text. The Oklahoma Climatological Survey Mesonet dataset contains measurements of relative humidity, air temperature, wind speed and direction, precipitation, atmospheric pressure, solar radiation and calibrated soil moisture. More information on the contents and data format can be found at http://www.mesonet.org/index.php/site/about/mdf_mts_files, and information on the parameters can be found at http://www.mesonet.org/files/parameter_description_readme.pdf.

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

References

Fiebrich, C. A., and K. C. Crawford 2001: The impact of unique meteorological phenomena detected by the Oklahoma Mesonet and ARS Micronet on automated quality control. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 82, 2173-2187.

Fiebrich, C. A., D. L. Grimsley, R. A. McPherson, K. A. Kesler, and G. R. Essenberg, 2006: The value of routine site visits in managing and maintaining quality data from the Oklahoma Mesonet. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 23, 406-416.

Fiebrich, C. A., C. R. Morgan, A. G. McCombs, P. K. Hall, Jr., and R. A. McPherson, 2010: Quality assurance procedures for mesoscale meteorological data. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 27, 1565-1582.

McManus, G., T. W. Schmidlin, and C. A. Fiebrich, 2012: A new minimum temperature record for Oklahoma. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., in press.

McPherson, R. A., and Coauthors, 2007: Statewide monitoring of the mesoscale environment: A technical update on the Oklahoma Mesonet. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 24, 301-321.

Shafer, M. A., C. A. Fiebrich, D. S. Arndt, S. E. Fredrickson, and T. W. Hughes, 2000: Quality assurance procedures in the Oklahoma Mesonet. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 17, 474-494.

U.S. Department of Commerce, 2003: Cooperative Station Management. U.S. Department of Commerce, National Weather Service Instruction 10-1307, 11 pp.

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: ghrcdaac@itsc.uah.edu
Web: http://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/