Merged Profiler/Rawinsonde Sounding Dataset

Brief Description

During the intensive observing period (IOP) of TOGA COARE, a large number of collocated rawinsonde and profiler wind observations were taken at six Integrated Sounding System (ISS) sites and Biak, Indonesia. To mitigate limitations in the rawinsonde dataset due to missing and bad wind observations, a procedure was developed to combine profiler and sonde winds to produce an integrated, high quality, upper-air sounding dataset. In addition to improving the overall quality of the winds, this procedure eliminates several data gaps in the sonde dataset. For example, below 800 hPa the amount of bad and missing wind data is reduced from about 45% to 20% at the land-based ISS sites.

The organization and details of the merged datasets are described in Ciesielski et al. (1997). For additional information on how these merged datasets were created and their impact upon various atmospheric analyses, one should refer to this publication.




Accessing the Data

Click here to view and download the merged datasets. Refer to the Readme file which contains important documentation for reading and using these datasets. Report any problems in the merged datasets to Paul Ciesielski at paulc@atmos.colostate.edu .



Reference

Ciesielski, P.E., L.M. Hartten, and R.H. Johnson, 1997: Impacts of merging profiler and rawinsonde winds on Toga COARE analyses. J. of Atmos. Oceanic Tech., 14, 1264-1279.

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