Author: Paul E. Ciesielski
Date: 23 April 2012

These files represent a GTS-resolution version of the Level 0 (L0) 
upper-air sounding data collected primarily from the Global 
Telecommunication System (GTS), which is WMO's communications and 
data management component that allows for the global collection and 
distribution of weather data. These data were collected at Priority 
Sounding Sites (PSS) designated for the DYNAMO/CINDY/AMIE field campaign. 
This L0 dataset represents data collected during field phase of experiment 
which have undergone minimal quality control and processing. 

Accessing the data:

A good tool for retrieving files via the web from within a script is "wget".
For example, to grab all the "upaqf.*" files from the DYNAMO website 
do the following:

wget -r -l1 --no-parent -nd -nH -A upaqf.* http://johnson.atmos.colostate.edu/dynamo/products/data/upaqf/

This will do a "one level recursive get" (the "-r -l1 --no-parent" options) 
of all files in the specified URL of the form "upaqf.*" (the "-A upaqf.*" 
option) and store them in the current local directory without any 
subdirectories being made (the "-nd -nH" options).  

Reading the data:

A simple fortran program for reading these files is provided (read_upa.f).

Data format:

Each sounding contains the following information:
c   information about sonde launch time and location:
c   year
c   month
c   day
c   hour
c   surface height
c   latitude of site
c   longitude of site
c   station wmo number (if available)
            
c   variables of interest:
c   p - pressure (mb)
c   h - height or altitude (m)
c   t - temperature (C)
c   td - dew point temperature (C)
c   dir - wind direction (degrees)
c   spd - wind speed (m/s)
c   xlat  - latitudinal position of balloon 
c   xlon  - longitude position of balloon
 
c   quality flags:
c   qp - quality flag on pressure
c   qh - quality flag on height
c   qt - quality flag on temperature
c   qd - quality flag on dew point
c   qw - quality flag on winds

c         Flag    Meaning
c        Value
c          1     parameter good
c          2     parameter questionable
c          3     parameter "visually" questionable
c          4     parameter bad
c          5     parameter "visually" bad
c          6     parameter interpolated
c          7     parameter estimated
c          8     parameter unchecked
c          9     parameter missing

Note: quality checks applied to data were quite minimal, basically gross
      limit checks based a representative mean sounding.

A second program is provided (getupa_site.f) if a user wants to extract 
data for a single site from these files and collect this data into one file.

High-resolution  will be processed into a reseach-quality dataset using the 
procedure described at: http://www.eol.ucar.edu/projects/sondeqc/

Contact person: Paul Ciesielski: paulc@atmos.colostate.edu