The NERC Mesosphere-Stratosphere-Troposphere (MST) Radar Facility at Aberystwyth

General Info

Title:	The NERC Mesosphere-Stratosphere-Troposphere (MST) Radar Facility at Aberystwyth
Type:	Data Entity
Sub-Type:	Measurement
Abbreviation:	MST Radar
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_MST

Summary
A brief description of the data.

Data from the instruments at the NERC MST Radar Facility near Aberystwyth in West Wales. The principal measurements made by the MST radar are of the three dimensional wind vector over the altitude range 2 - 20 km. Surface meteorological measurements from the radar site, ceilometer data, sky camera images and wind speed and direction recorded from a 10m tower located 6km away are also available. Other instruments at the facility have included one of the Met Office's boundary layer wind profilers and NCAS's boundary layer wind profiler.

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 NERC MST Radar at Capel Dewi (near Aberystwyth, West Wales, UK) is a 46.5 MHz pulsed Doppler radar ideally suited for studies of atmospheric winds, waves and turbulence. It is run predominantly in the ST mode (approximately 2 - 20 km altitude) for which MST radars are unique in their ability to give continuous measurements of the three dimensional wind vector at high resolution (typically 2 - 3 minutes in time and 300 m in altitude). Under certain circumstances they can additionally provide information about humidity, static stability (thus allowing monitoring of the altitude and sharpness of the tropopause) and turbulence of at least moderate intensity.

Other instruments at the facility include one of the Met Office's 915 MHz boundary layer wind profilers and a NERC climate data logger for measuring surface temperature, pressure, humidity, rainfall and solar radiation; surface wind measurements are made from Frongoch, a nearby site. High-resolution radiosonde data from RAF Aberporth, approximately 45 km to the south-west of the radar site, are available for the period April 1990 - June 2000.

Restricted Data Access

Data from all of the above instruments are freely available to academic researchers through the BADC; users must first apply for access to MST data.

People requiring the data for commercial purposes should contact the NERC MST Radar Project Scientist directly.

Data availability and file format

The file formats are described on the main MST Radar web pages.

Quick-look plots of the latest and archived data are freely available (even to those not registered for access to data) through the BADC.

Documentation and Links to further information and references

More detailed descriptions of the instruments, operating principles and file formats can be found on the main NERC MST Radar Facility web pages.

Citation

Date of citation

Who to contact

If you have queries about these pages or about obtaining the MST Radar data from the BADC then you should contact BADC Support. All other queries concerning the instruments and data should be directed to the NERC MST Radar Project Scientist.

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 acquired by the MST radar facility and sent to the BADC within an hour of acquisition. Data are then immediately ingested into the BADC archives.

Quality Statement
Description of the relative quality of the dataset.

The MST radar data quality is described by D. A. Hooper, J. Nash, T. Oakley, and M. Turp. Validation of a new signal processing scheme for the MST radar at Aberystwyth. Ann. Geophys., 26(11):3253-3268, 2008. (available from here http://www.ann-geophys.net/26/3253/2008/angeo-26-3253-2008.html)

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
mst.nerc.ac.uk	http://mst.nerc.ac.uk/contacts.html

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	The NERC MST Radar Facility website
Download	MST Data Directory
Apply for access	Apply for access to MST data
Logo	MST 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.

Andrews test record

Associated Deployments

Parameters - summary

NULL	TROPOPAUSE	ATMOSPHERE	WINDSPEED
ATMOSPHERICTEMPERATURE	ATMOSPHERICSTABILITY	VERTICALWINDMOTION	UPPERLEVELWINDS
ATMOSPHERICWINDS	VMERIDIONALWINDSPEED	VERTICALWINDSPEED	UZONALWINDSPEED
EARTH SCIENCE	SURFACEWINDS	ALTITUDE	WIND_SPEED
WINDDIRECTION	TURBULENCE	SPECTRALWIDTH

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
NULL	general_units	0
TROPOPAUSE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ATMOSPHERE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P131	NULL
WINDSPEED	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ATMOSPHERICTEMPERATURE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P141	NULL
ATMOSPHERICSTABILITY	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
VERTICALWINDMOTION	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
VMERIDIONALWINDSPEED	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
VERTICALWINDSPEED	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
UZONALWINDSPEED	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
EARTH SCIENCE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P111	GCAT0001
SURFACEWINDS	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
ALTITUDE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P141	NULL
WIND_SPEED	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P071/16	CFSN0038
WINDDIRECTION	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
TURBULENCE	http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/null	NULL
SPECTRALWIDTH	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: 52.4
Min X: -4.0	Max X -4.0
Min Y 52.4

Temporal coverage
Start Date:	1990-02-19
End Date:

Spatial resolution

point source

Vertical extent

150m, 300m

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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