Met Office - UK High Resolution Radiosonde Data

General Info

Title:	Met Office - UK High Resolution Radiosonde Data
Type:	Data Entity
Sub-Type:	Measurement
Abbreviation:	Met Office - UK High Resolutio
Publication State:	published
The publication state of this metadata: 'old' - for redundant records; 'working' - for new/in progress records; 'published' - for records approaching maturity, which may still change, but should be available via the discovery services; and 'Published' for mature records that are unlikely to change and should be available via the discovery services.

URI:	http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/view/badc.nerc.ac.uk__ATOM__dataent_ABER

Summary
A brief description of the data.

High resolution radiosonde data from UK stations and also from Gibraltar, St Helena and the Falklands.. The data consists of vertical profiles of pressure, temperature, relative humidity, humidity mixing ratio, sonde position, wind speed and wind direction. Measurements are taken at 2 second intervals and the ascents extend to heights of approximately 20-30 km. The archive has around 10 stations with data from the 1990's. Data from Aberporth is also available from April 1990 - April 2000. Generally there are 4 ascents per day from each station.

Content
The actual data being described by this document. NB, in the case of data granules, this content may just be a reference to an ingested CSML or CDML file.

Introduction

The data consists of vertical profiles of pressure, temperature, relative humidity, humidity mixing ratio, sonde position, wind speed and wind direction. Measurements are taken at 2 second intervals and the ascents extend to heights of approximately 20-30km. Two subsets of data are available:

Met Office stations are sited around the UK and also in Gibraltar and the Falklands. Generally there are 4 ascents per day from each station. The archive has around 10 stations with data from the 1990's onwards. Current availability.

Data from Aberporth (on the west coast of Wales) is available from April 1990 - April 2000 - At least one ascent per day up until April 1996, 4 ascents per day thereafter. This data was obtained to support the work with the MST radar at Aberystwyth.

UK radiosonde station details can be seen through the BADC MIDAS station search engine. The stations can be located by looking for Upper Air stations on the Interactive Map.

How to find a weather station using the Interactive map.

Restricted Data Access

The Met Office wish to monitor the use of this data and require an acknowledgement of the data source if they are used in any publication. The online application for access to the Met Office Radiosonde data includes acceptance of the Met Office Conditions of Use. Please note that the Met Office data sets are available for bona fide academic research only (sorry no undergraduates), on a per person per project basis (i.e. all members on a same project who will be using the data must individually apply for access to the data). If you wish to access the Met Office data for commercial or personal purposes, please contact the Met Office directly.

Your application for accessing the Met Office Radiosonde data will be processed within a day of receipt and an email confirmation will be sent. Provided your application is complete and fully meets the Met Office conditions, a web account will be established and an email message including your account details will be sent to you. You will then be able to access the Met Office Radiosonde data directories via your login account from the BADC WWW Browse Archive pages.

Please read the 00README file available under /badc/ukmo-rad-hires/ directory to to guide you through the tree structure and the data directory.

Data availability and file format

The Aberporth data held at the BADC, are stored in a simple ASCII format (plain text and "human" readable). A simple data file format has been adopted.

The UK data is in the Vaisala PC-CORA binary format. Software to read this data is available. The format is described in the links below:

PC-CORA File structure (1991)

Sounding Data File Formats for PC-based Systems (1998)

Documentation and Links to further information and references

The BADC provides a comprehensive help file which contains background information to help you use the radiosonde station data held at the BADC.

The BADC also holds standard level radionsonde data from global stations.

Citation

Date of citation

Who to contact

If you have queries about these pages or about obtaining the radiosonde station data from the BADC then you should contact BADC Support. Your query should be answered within one working day. When follow-up work is required, the BADC support will carry out the work as quickly and efficiently as possible, and in any case, the user will be kept informed of progress.

Lineage
Summary of the origins of the dataset, e.g.: "Dataset produced from NASA MODIS instrument on Terra and collected at the University of York's groundstation 1999-2003 and a copy provided to NEODC in June 2007".

Data are collected by the stations carrying out the radiosonde ascents and then transmitted back to the Met Office headquarters in Exeter. The ascent files are then delivered to the BADC for ingesting into the archive approximately 1 month in arrears.

Quality Statement
Description of the relative quality of the dataset.

Data are from operational radiosondes stations, but are not quality checked. Therefore care should be taken to ensure that ascents are not affected by icing etc.

Author
The principal author of the actual underlying data. Only one author can be specified per atom; if there are multiple authors, these should be specified as 'contributors'. NB, an atom MUST have an author specified.

Name	email
www.metoffice.gov.uk	enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk

Online References
Online references with a specific relationship to the data being described here. NB, if links are supplied they must be valid and include the transport protocol - e.g. 'http://blah.co.uk'. Also, note, three online references can be added at once; after these are added a further three may be specified - and so on.

Relation	Title
Documentation	BADC Doc: Help File Radiosonde data
Download	Met Office High resolution Radiosonde Data Directory
Apply for access	Apply for access to Met Office High Resolution Radiosonde data
Logo	Met Office Logo

Parent Data Entity
Define the parent of this record. There should probably only be one parent, but this is not enforced.

No data specified at present

Sub Data Entities
Lists all entities which have the current entity as their parent.

None

Associated Deployments

Parameters - summary

VERTICALPROFILEOFAIRTEMPERATURE	AIRTEMPERATURE	ATMOSPHERICTEMPERATURE	ATMOSPHERE
EARTH SCIENCE	NULL	WINDSPEED	UPPERLEVELWINDS
ATMOSPHERICWINDS	HUMIDITYMIXINGRATIO	HUMIDITY	ATMOSPHERICWATERVAPOR
HEIGHTFROMSONDEDATA	GEOPOTENTIALHEIGHT	ALTITUDE	RELATIVEHUMIDITY
HEIGHT	HEIGHTFROMRADARDATA	WINDDIRECTION	SLANTRANGEOFSONDE
ATMOSPHERICPRESSURE

Parameters - details
Parameters to describe the data - with vocab URL and term IDs for further classification. Note, three parameters can be added at once; after these are added a further three may be specified - and so on.

Label	Vocab Term URL	Vocab Term ID
VERTICALPROFILEOFAIRTEMPERATURE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
AIRTEMPERATURE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ATMOSPHERICTEMPERATURE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P141	NULL
ATMOSPHERE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P131	NULL
EARTH SCIENCE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P111	GCAT0001
NULL	general_units	0
WINDSPEED	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
UPPERLEVELWINDS	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ATMOSPHERICWINDS	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P141	NULL
HUMIDITYMIXINGRATIO	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
HUMIDITY	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ATMOSPHERICWATERVAPOR	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P141	NULL
HEIGHTFROMSONDEDATA	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
GEOPOTENTIALHEIGHT	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ALTITUDE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P141	NULL
RELATIVEHUMIDITY	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
HEIGHT	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
HEIGHTFROMRADARDATA	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
WINDDIRECTION	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
SLANTRANGEOFSONDE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ATMOSPHERICPRESSURE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P141	NULL

Data Coverage
Summary of the temporal and spatial data coverage for the data.

Spatial coverage
Max Y: 60.139
Min X: -58.45	Max X 73.15
Min Y -51.817

Temporal coverage
Start Date:	1990-04-01
End Date:

Spatial resolution

No spatial resoultion information available.

Vertical extent

No vertical extent information available.

Responsible Parties
Parties responsible for the metadata - e.g. data curator. Responsible parties can have a role specified to make their function clearer. Multiple responsible parties can be specified.

Role	Name	URI
Data Curator	badc.nerc.ac.uk	http://badc.nerc.ac.uk

Other Info
Other miscellaneous information. Note, update frequency relates to the update frequency of the underlying data, not the metadata.

Dataset language

English

Update frequency

daily

Links and Services
	Downloadable XML version of this record

Not all information in this record may be rendered in this view. Please see the XML version for complete content

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