NCAR Upper Air Database, 1920-ongoing

The NCAR Upper Air Database (UADB) contains global observations beginning in the 1920s and extends to a near current date. Upper air soundings from about 50 different sources have been consolidated into products that are well documented and provide the longest possible, duplicate-free, station time series. Historical sampling methods have been accounted for by creating two product lines, one with soundings that have wind (UADB-Wind) and another with temperature and humidity (UADB-TRH) measurements. This approach maximizes the amount of data consolidated, and when profiles have simultaneous temperature, humidity, and wind measurements, they are replicated in both products.

The first consolidation step was compositing stations with identical WMO station numbers across all data sources. The UADB-TRH product has nearly 1100 stations that report for 20 years or more, and over 400 stations have time series of 50 years or longer. The UADB-Wind product has about 1600 stations that report for 20 years or more, and over 500 stations have soundings for at least 50 years. Next stations with different WMO station numbers, but that are located at identical latitudes and longitudes, or nearly so (within 40 kilometers) were combined, accounting for WMO station number changes and small position relocations. The result is that even longer station time series are created; extensions occur at over 240 and 250 locations in the UADB-TRH and UADB-Wind products, respectively. The composited and combined products are both available.

To Access Resource:

Questions? Email Resource Support Contact:

  • Chi-Fan Shih
    chifan@ucar.edu
    UCAR/NCAR - Research Data Archive

Temporal Range

  • Begin:  1922-07-10
    End:  2023-12-31

Keywords

Resource Type dataset
Temporal Range Begin 1922-07-10
Temporal Range End 2023-12-31
Temporal Resolution N/A
Bounding Box North Lat N/A
Bounding Box South Lat N/A
Bounding Box West Long N/A
Bounding Box East Long N/A
Spatial Representation N/A
Spatial Resolution N/A
Related Links

Related Resource #1 : WMO website with links to catalogues of surface and radiosonde stations over time.

Related Resource #2 : World Wide Station List

Additional Information N/A
Resource Format ASCII
Standardized Resource Format ASCII
Asset Size 715839 MB
Legal Constraints

Use of this dataset is subject to UCAR's Terms of Use, except that commercial use is generally not prohibited.


Access Constraints Registration on the RDA web site is a requirement for access to the data.
Software Implementation Language N/A

Resource Support Name Chi-Fan Shih
Resource Support Email chifan@ucar.edu
Resource Support Organization UCAR/NCAR - Research Data Archive
Distributor NCAR Research Data Archive
Metadata Contact Name N/A
Metadata Contact Email rdahelp@ucar.edu
Metadata Contact Organization NCAR Research Data Archive

Author Research Data Archive, Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Publisher Research Data Archive at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Computational and Information Systems Laboratory
Publication Date 2014-02-24
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) https://doi.org/10.5065/VF9X-8D15
Alternate Identifier ds370.1
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere
Progress onGoing
Metadata Date 2024-01-19T23:05:02-07:00
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.rda::ds370.1
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Research Data Archive, Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. (2014). NCAR Upper Air Database, 1920-ongoing. Research Data Archive at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Computational and Information Systems Laboratory. https://doi.org/10.5065/VF9X-8D15. Accessed 18 March 2024.

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