Met Office - Global Radiosonde Data

General Info

Title:	Met Office - Global Radiosonde Data
Type:	Data Entity
Sub-Type:	Measurement
Abbreviation:	Met Office - Global Radiosonde
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_GLOBRADS

Summary
A brief description of the data.

Standard resolution radiosonde data from worldwide upper air stations over the period 1997 - present (Some European stations are available from 1990). The dataset consists of vertical profiles of temperature, dew-point temperature, wind speed and wind direction from the surface to approximately 20-30 km. Data are reported up to four times daily. The data are provided by the Met Office.

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

This dataset consists of radiosonde data from stations worldwide. Stations are categorised into 7 regions: Africa, Asia, South America, North and Central America, South-West Pacific, Europe, and Antarctica, respectively. A clickable world map is available to view worldwide radiosonde station lists.

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.

The data comprise vertical profiles of temperature, dew-point temperature, wind speed and wind direction at standard and significant pressure levels. The standard pressure levels are 1000, 925, 850, 700, 500, 400, 300, 250, 200, 150, 100, 70, 50, 30, 20 and 10 mb. Significant pressure levels are calculated according to the Met Office criteria and constitute levels at which significant events occur in the profile, e.g temperature inversions.

The period of coverage is 1997 to present (some European stations are available from 1990), updated weekly. Stations conduct ascents up to four times daily at the synoptic hours of 00, 06, 12, 18 GMT.

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.

Data availability and file format

The data held at the BADC, are now stored in in Nasa-Ames 2160 format.

The simple data ASCII file format used previously was dropped in 2006.

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

Documentation and Links to further information and references

Additional January and February 1997 Radiosonde data can be obtained from the FASTEX (Fronts and Atlantic Storm Track EXperiment) Central Data Archive via the web at http://www.cnrm.meteo.fr:8000/dbfastex/.

NOAA announces the availability of a new dataset consisting of monthly time series of homogeneity-adjusted radiosonde temperatures.
These new data, Radiosonde Atmospheric Temperature Products for Assessing Climate (RATPAC), are now available online from the National Climatic Data Center. Data coverage is near-global from a limited network of 85 stations, beginning in 1958 and continuing to present.

High resolution radiosonde data (2 seconds interval data) is also available for a number of stations run by the Met Office, e.g. Aberporth, Camborne, Lerwick.

The Met Office maintains web pages on EUMETNET (Rawinsonde Network Information, Operational problems and Research and Development) and individual member countries.

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 transmitted from source as TEMP and PILOT messages. These are received by the Met Office and stored in the Met Office's MetDB system. Daily extractions from the MetDB system are sent to the BADC and ingested.

Quality Statement
Description of the relative quality of the dataset.

Data are from an operational system, but are not quality checked at the point where extracted by the BADC.

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
Met Office	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 Global Radiosonde Data Directory
Apply for access	Apply for access to Met Office Global 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	HEIGHT	GEOPOTENTIALHEIGHT	ALTITUDE
STATIONHEIGHT	WINDDIRECTION	ATMOSPHERICPRESSURE	DEWPOINTTEMPERATURE
ATMOSPHERICWATERVAPOR

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
HEIGHT	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
STATIONHEIGHT	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
WINDDIRECTION	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ATMOSPHERICPRESSURE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P141	NULL
DEWPOINTTEMPERATURE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ATMOSPHERICWATERVAPOR	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: 90.0
Min X: -180.0	Max X 180.0
Min Y -90.0

Temporal coverage
Start Date:	1990-01-01
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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