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GPM Ground Validation NASA Micro Rain Radar (MRR) MC3E Table of Contents
The document MRR_NASA_MC3E_disclaimer.txt contains important restriction/disclaimer information for the NASA MRR dataset. The GPM Ground Validation NASA Micro Rain Radar (MRR) is a vertically pointing Doppler radar which provided measurements of vertical velocity, drop size distribution, rainfall rate, attenuation, liquid water content, and reflectivity factor obtained during the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E), which took place in Oklahoma during Spring 2011. The NASA MRR was located adjacent to the NOAA S-band, UHF profilers and Parsivel at the SGP (Southern Great Plains) Central Facility. CampaignThe 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/. Instrument DescriptionThe NASA MRR is a frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) vertically pointing Doppler radar, which operates at 24.24GHz and provides vertical profiles of drop size distribution. The MRR is the second generation of the instrument manufactured by METEK. Additional information is available at http://www.metek.de/product-details/mrr-2.html. Three types of data were provided by the NASA MRR: raw data or raw spectrum, processed or instantaneous data, and averaged data. The raw data contains measurements of raw mean spectral power. The processed data contains measurements of spectral reflectivity, drop size distribution, spectral drop density, fall velocity, attenuation, radar reflectivity and integral rainfall parameters derived from one raw spectrum. Averaged data contains the same derived parameters as the processed data, but it is derived from multiple raw spectra. InvestigatorsWalter A.Petersen Patrick Gatlin Data are in tared gzipped files of the form:
where
The following ASCII files are contained within the tar file:
Data Format The GPM Ground Validation NASA Micro Rain Radar (MRR) dataset consists of ASCII files containing measurements of the received spectral power and parameters derived from the measurements. The document DataFormat_mrr_NASA__mc3e.pdf provides further details on the NASA MRR data file format. CitationOur 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 Peters, Gerhard, Bernd Fischer, Hans Münster, Marco Clemens, Andreas Wagner, 2005: Profiles of Raindrop Size Distributions as Retrieved by Microrain Radars. J. Appl. Meteor., 44, 1930–1949. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JAM2316.1 Peters, Gerhard, Bernd Fischer, Marco Clemens, 2010: Rain Attenuation of Radar Echoes Considering Finite-Range Resolution and Using Drop Size Distributions. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 27, 829–842. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2009JTECHA1342.1 Contact InformationTo order these data or for further information, please contact:
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