Identification

Title

Quality-controlled upper-air sounding dataset for TiMREX/SoWMEX: Development and corrections

Abstract

During the Terrain-Influenced Monsoon Rainfall Experiment (TiMREX), which coincided with Taiwan's Southwesterly Monsoon Experiment-2008 (SoWMEX-08), the upper-air sounding network over the Taiwan region was enhanced by increasing the radiosonde ("sonde") frequency at its operational sites and by adding several additional sites (three that were land based and two that were ship based) and aircraft dropsondes. During the special observing period of TiMREX (from 15 May to 25 June 2008), 2330 radiosonde observations were successfully taken from the enhanced network. Part of the challenge of processing the data from the 13 upsonde sites is that four different sonde types (Vaisala RS80, Vaisala RS92, Meisei, and Graw) were used. Post-field phase analyses of the sonde data revealed a significant dry bias in many of the sondes--in particular, in the data from the Vaisala RS80 sondes that were used at four sites. In addition, contamination of the sonde data by the ship's structure resulted in poor-quality low-level thermodynamic data at a key oceanic site. This article examines the methods used to quality control the sonde data and, when possible, to correct them. Particular attention is given to the correction of the humidity field and its impact on various convective measures. Comparison of the corrected sonde humidity data with independent estimates shows good agreement, suggesting that the corrections were effective in removing many of the sonde humidity errors. Examining various measures of convection shows that use of the humidity-corrected sondes gives a much different perspective on the characteristics of convection during TiMREX. For example, at the RS80 sites, use of the corrected humidity data increases the mean CAPE by ∼500 J kg(⁻¹), decreases mean convective inhibition (CIN) by 80 J kg(⁻¹), and increases the midlevel convective mass flux by greater than 70%. Ultimately, these corrections will provide more accurate moisture fields for diagnostic analyses and modeling studies.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7pc32v9

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2010-11-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

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version of format

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Use constraints

Copyright 2010 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact