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DOCUMENTATION

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GPM Ground Validation Environment Canada (EC) Radiosonde GCPEx

Table of Contents

Introduction
Campaign
Instrument Description
Investigators
File Naming Convention
Data Format
Citation
References
Contact Information

Introduction

The GPM Ground Validation Environment Canada (EC) Radiosonde GCPEx data set includes measurements of temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind collected in the upper atmosphere by Vaisala RS92 Radiosondes. The radiosondes were launched during the GPM Cold-season Precipitation Experiment (GCPEx) at the CARE site in Ontario, Canada from January 17 to February 29, 2012. The GPM Ground Validation Environment Canada (EC) Radiosonde GCPEx data is available in ASCII text format. Browse images of the data are also available in .gif format. The browse images are Skew-T Log- P diagrams for each radiosonde launch.

Campaign

The GPM Cold-season Precipitation Experiment (GCPEx) occurred in Ontario, Canada during the winter season of 2011-2012. GCPEx addressed shortcomings in the GPM snowfall retrieval algorithm by collecting microphysical properties, associated remote sensing observations, and coordinated model simulations of precipitating snow. These data sets were collected to aid in the achievement of the over arching goal of GCPEx which is to characterize the ability of multi-frequency active and passive microwave sensors to detect and estimate falling snow.

During GCPEx, radiosondes were launched at the CARE site in Ontario, Canada. The location of the CARE site is:

CARE: Lat: 44°13'59.45"N; Lon: 79°46'50.11"W

Data was collected from January 17, 2012 t0 February 29, 2012.

Further details on GCPEx are available at http://gpm.nsstc.nasa.gov/gcpex. Information on the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission is available at http://pmm.nasa.gov/GPM.

Instrument Description

The Vaisala RS92 Radiosonde measures humidity, temperature, pressure, and wind in the upper atmosphere. The radiosonde features a GPS antenna to measure wind, a silicon pressure sensor, a temperature sensor, and heated twin humidity sensors. More information and documentation about the Vaisala RS92 Radiosonde can be found at http://www.vaisala.com/en/products/soundingsystemsandradiosondes/radiosondes/Pages/RS92.aspx.

More information about radiosondes can be found in the document Radiometric profiling of temperature, water vapor and cloud liquid water using various inversion methods.

Investigators

David Hudak
Cloud Physics and Severe Weather Research Section
Environment Canada
King City, Canada

File Naming Convention

The GPM Ground Validation Environment Canada (EC) Radiosonde GCPEx data and browse files are named with the following convention:

gcpex_radiosonde_CARE-YYYYMMDD_HHMMz_edt_NNN.tsv

where,

gcpex = GPM Cold-season Precipitation Experiment
radiosonde = Vaisala RS92 Radiosondes
CARE = site location
YYYYMMDD = the year, month and day of the data
HHMMz = the hour and minutes of the data in UTC time
edt = standard Vaisala processed file
NNN = radiosonde launch number
tsv = tab-separated values ASCII file

The GPM Ground Validation Environment Canada (EC) Radiosonde GCPEx browse files are named with the same convention as above but are appended with the .gif extension. Gif is a bitmap image file format.

Data Format

The GPM Ground Validation Environment Canada (EC) Radiosonde GCPEx data files are available in ASCII text format. The top of each file includes a header which describes the parameters of each column in the data. The header includes the record name, the units of each record, the data type, and the divisor of each record.

The GPM Ground Validation Environment Canada (EC) Radiosonde GCPEx browse files are available in .gif format. The browse images are Skew-T Log- P diagrams for each radiosonde launch.

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

References

Solheim, F., Godwin, J., Westwater, E., Han, Y., Keihm, S., Marsh, K., and Ware, R., 1998: Radiometric profiling of temperature, water vapor, and cloud liquid water using various inversion methods. Radio Science, 33, pp. 393–404

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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