Chilbolton Facility for Atmospheric and Radio Research (CFARR)

The Chilbolton Facility for Atmospheric and Radio Research (CFARR) is a ground-based atmospheric remote sensing facility in the village of Chilbolton near Winchester in Hampshire (51.1445°N, 1.4370°W).It is also a leading radio science research laboratory. The combination of measurement capabilities required to address these two disciplines has established a large suite of instruments to meet the needs of researchers in the radiowave propagation and atmospheric science/climate research communities. The facility includes:

• 1275 MHz Clear air radar (ACROBAT)
• 3 GHz Chilbolton Advanced Meteorological Radar (CAMRa)
• 35 GHz cloud radar (Copernicus)
• 94 GHz cloud radar (Galileo)
• 355 nm UV Raman lidar
• IR lidar ceilometer (905 nm Vaisala CT75K)
• Micro and millimetre wave radiometers
• Water vapour profiling radiometer
• Visible & IR Radiometers
• Meteorological Instrumentation
• Millimetre wave terrestrial radio links at 38, 54 and 56 GHz.
• Distrometer
• Specialised and standard rain gauges
• Cloud camera
• Chilbolton Global Broadcast System

Radio propagation studies characterise the statistics and causes of fades on radio links. The NERC atmospheric science, hydrology and Earth Observation communities use Chilbolton to conduct research in weather, flooding and climate. Weather science often involves observations of phenomena operating below the current resolution of models and work on their effective parameterisation in models. Climate science may involve use of continuous cloud radar observations to evaluate climate model cloud climatologies.

In order to gain access to the data, please apply for one of the three data subsets below.

• set1 which consists of:
  • 3 GHz Chilbolton Advanced Meteorological Radar (CAMRa)
  • 1275 MHz Clear Air Radar (ACROBAT)
  • Digital camera pointing at the dish (Axis2100)
• set 2 which consists of:
  • 355 nm UV Raman lidar
  • IR lidar ceilometer (905 nm Vaisala CT75K)
  • 35 GHz Radar (Copernicus)
  • 95 GHz Radar (Galileo)
• or set 3 which consists of:
  • Microwave radiometers
  • Water vapour profiling radiometer
  • Visible & IR Radiometers
  • Meteorological Instrumentation
  • Millimetre wave terrestrial radio links at 38, 54 and 56 GHz.
  • Distrometers
  • Specialised and standard rain gauges
  • Cloud camera
  • Global Broadcast System satellite link data

If you need access to all data groups, you can apply for them in one joint application but please justify why you need access to all groups otherwise your application may be slowed down as you may need to be recontacted about this.

The applications may take a number of days to complete as the data providing facility requires further information about your project and will send you a form to complete. Alternatively it is available here and can be sent direct to the facility.

Chilbolton data are then available through the BADC, along with quicklooks for the two dimensional datasets.

Chilbolton data that pre-dates the dataset here are held by the Chilbolton Group of STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. For example 3 GHz radar go back to 1987. Access can be arranged by contacting C.L.Wrench.

The Chilbolton Group would like to monitor the use of these data and require an acknowledgement of the data source if they are used in any publication. The facility is owned by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, funded by NERC and operated by the Chilbolton Group of STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Data are stored in NetCDF format with images for the two dimensional datasets provided in png format.

Programs to read NetCDF files of Chilbolton data into Matlab, IDL and PV-WAVE can be found in the software archive.

Some of the older Chilbolton data on the BADC are in different formats. Early drop counting raingauge data are in ASCII format. Radar data from the winter of 1998-99 are stored in a simple ASCII format with composite images comparing radar, ceilometer, rain gauge and ECMWF data each day in gif format.

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

Information on updates and changes to the archive is available on the status page.

Documentation is available at the BADC for data for these instruments :

• 94 GHz Galileo radar.
• 905 nm Vaisala CT75K lidar ceilometer.
• 355 nm UV Raman lidar.
• 3 GHz Chilbolton Advanced Meteorological Radar (CAMRa).
• Chilbolton cloud camera.
• Chilbolton disdrometers.
• Chilbolton meteorological sensors.
• Drop-counting and tipping bucket raingauges.v
• South Wonston to Sparsholt 5 km Radio Links.
• Chilbolton Global Broadcast System
• Visible and IR radiometers.
• Water vapour profiling radiometer.v
• winter 1998-99 datasets.

Programs are available to users which allow the data to be accessed from IDL, Matlab or PV-Wave. These are described in detail in the softwaredocument.

The Chilbolton web site provides further information on the facility and the Chilbolton Weather Web displays live data from the instruments. Details of the work of the Reading University Radar Meteorology group can be found here. A list of CFARR publications (2002-2007) is also available.

Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), Chilbolton Facility for Atmospheric and Radio Research, [Wrench, C.L.]. Chilbolton Facility for Atmospheric and Radio Research (CFARR) data, [Internet]. NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre, 2003-,Date of citation. Available from http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/view/badc.nerc.ac.uk__ATOM__dataent_chobs.

General queries about these pages and access to the available data should be directed to the BADC Support line. 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.

Any queries relating to specifics of the data themselves can be directed to C. L. Wrench of the Chilbolton Group of the STFC.