Cospar International Reference Atmosphere (CIRA-86)

General Info

Title:	Cospar International Reference Atmosphere (CIRA-86)
Type:	Data Entity
Sub-Type:	Simulation
Abbreviation:	CIRA
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_CIRA

Summary
A brief description of the data.

A global climatology of atmospheric temperature, zonal velocity and geopotential height derived from a combination of satellite, radiosonde and ground-based measurements. The reference atmosphere extends from pole to pole and 0-120 km. The majority of the data are on a 5 degree latitude grid and approximately 2 km vertical resolution. This dataset is public.

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 COSPAR International Reference Atmosphere (CIRA) provides empirical models of atmospheric temperatures and densities as recommended by the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR). Since the early sixties, several different editions of CIRA have been published. The CIRA Working Group meets biannually during the COSPAR general assemblies. In the thermosphere (above about 100 km) CIRA-86 is identical with the MSIS model, which is available from NSSDC (MI-91E).

The lower part (0-120 km) of CIRA-86 consists of tables of the monthly mean values of temperature and zonal wind with almost global coverage (80°N - 80°S). Two files were compiled by Fleming et al. (1988), one in pressure coordinates including also the geopotential heights, and one in height coordinates including also the pressure values. These tables were generated from several global data compilations including ground-based and satellite (Nimbus 5,6,7) measurements (see Oort (1983) and Labitzke et al. (1985)). The lower part was merged with MSIS-86 at 120 km altitude. In general, hydrostatic and thermal wind balance are maintained at all levels. The model accurately reproduces most of the characteristic features of the atmosphere such as the equatorial wind and the general structure of the tropopause, stratopause, and mesopause.

Data File Format

The CIRA data are held online at the BADC. They are held in ASCII tables which can be displayed on your web browser, and then `saved' on to your computer. CIRA-86 is also now available in NetCDF format (cira.nc as kindly provided by a BADC user).

The CIRA dataset held at the BADC is a corrected version of the original CIRA data files as provided by J.Barnett (July 1990) in ascii format. Original CIRA data files (Binary format) are available for download from the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) anonymous FTP site at (ftp://nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/models/atmospheric/cira) together with the driver program CIRAT, a Fortran code which allows fast and easy display of density, temperature and pressure for specified conditions.

Documentation, Links to further information and references

A copy of the README file for CIRA produced by the National Space Science Data Center (NDSSC) is available through this WWW interface.

The BADC obtained the CIRA data from the National Space Science Data Center which also hold a copy of the model and some display software.

Should you wish to know more about the CIRA data, there is a set of references which provide more comprehensive information. Many papers use this data as a standard climatology.

Citation

Date of citation

Who to contact

General queries about the data should be directed to the BADC support line.

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".

ASCII data files acquired as is from the NASA National Space Science Data Center. Netcdf file produced and provided by a BADC user.

Quality Statement
Description of the relative quality of the dataset.

Please ftp://nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/models/atmospheric/cira/Please_read.txt

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
NASA National Space Science Data Center

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
Download	CIRA Data Directory
Documentation	CIRA Logo
Documentation	BADC Doc: CIRA List of References

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

AIRTEMPERATURE	ATMOSPHERICWINDS	ERWEREWR	ATMOSPHERICTEMPERATURE
TEMPERATURE	ATMOSPHERICPRESSURE	ALTITUDE	HEIGHT
GEOPOTENTIALHEIGHT	ATMOSPHERE	UPPERLEVELWINDS	EARTH SCIENCE
UZONALWINDSPEED

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
AIRTEMPERATURE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ATMOSPHERICWINDS	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P141	NULL
ERWEREWR	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ATMOSPHERICTEMPERATURE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P141	NULL
TEMPERATURE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ATMOSPHERICPRESSURE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P141	NULL
ALTITUDE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P141	NULL
HEIGHT	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
GEOPOTENTIALHEIGHT	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ATMOSPHERE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P131	NULL
UPPERLEVELWINDS	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
EARTH SCIENCE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P111	GCAT0001
UZONALWINDSPEED	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL

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

Spatial coverage
Max Y: 90.0
Min X: -180.0	Max X 180.0
Min Y -90.0

Temporal coverage
Start Date:	1988-01-01
End Date:	1988-12-31

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

notPlanned

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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