Identification

Title

NCAR Upper Air Database, 1920-ongoing

Alternative title(s)

d370001

Abstract

<p>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.</p> <p>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.</p>

Resource type

dataset

Resource locator

https://gdex.ucar.edu/datasets/d370001/

protocol: https

name: Dataset Description

description: Related Link

function: information

https://gdex.ucar.edu/datasets/d370001/dataaccess/

protocol: https

name: Data Access

description: Related Link

function: download

Unique resource identifier

code

codeSpace

Dataset language

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

dataset

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

revision

effective date

2021-03-30

Keyword set

keyword value

PIBAL > Pilot Balloons

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

revision

effective date

2025-10-03

Keyword set

keyword value

EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR > WATER VAPOR INDICATORS > HUMIDITY

EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC WINDS > UPPER LEVEL WINDS

EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE > UPPER AIR TEMPERATURE

EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ALTITUDE > GEOPOTENTIAL HEIGHT

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

revision

effective date

2025-10-03

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

1922-07-10

End position

2023-12-31

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2014-02-24

Frequency of update

monthly

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

organisation name

email address

datahelp@ucar.edu

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

organisation name

NSF NCAR Geoscience Data Exchange

email address

datahelp@ucar.edu

web address

https://gdex.ucar.edu

name: NSF NCAR Geoscience Data Exchange

description: The Geoscience Data Exchange (GDEX), managed by the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) at NSF NCAR, contains a large collection of meteorological, atmospheric composition, and oceanographic observations, and operational and reanalysis model outputs, integrated with NSF NCAR High Performance Compute services to support atmospheric and geosciences research.

function: download

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-10-09T01:24:09Z

Metadata language