Summary:

This data set contains upper air meteorological profiles from 594 radiosonde launches made from sites in South Africa by the University of Wyoming. These sonde launches were made to augment the regional sounding network in the region during the SAFARI 2000 Dry Season Campaign of 2000.

Vaisala RS80 sondes were launched from nine sites in South Africa between August 1, 2000 and September 30, 2000. The launch sites were Pietersburg (changed to Polokwane after 2000), Pretoria (Irene), Bethlehem, Springbok, De Aar, Durban, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, and Gough Island. The parameters measured by the radiosonde instrument package RS80 include pressure, air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and wind direction.

Data Citation:

Cite this data set as follows:

Oolman, L. D. 2004. SAFARI 2000 Upper Air Meteorological Profiles, South Africa, Dry Season 2000. Data set. Available on-line [http://daac.ornl.gov/] from Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, U.S.A. doi:10.3334/ORNLDAAC/729.

References:

University of Wyoming, College of Engineering, Department of Atmospheric Science. Worldwide Radiosonde Soundings of the Atmosphere. Data available on-line at [http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html].

Data Format:

Each data file contains data from one radiosonde flight in ASCII table form. The data files are named using the following format:

rad_station_YYYYMMDD_HHz.txt.

For example, the file rad_68538_20000825_00z.txt is a radiosonde flight (rad) from station 68538 (De Aar, see the Site ID Table in the companion file) on 2000-08-25 (August 25, 2000) at 00z (hour 0000 Zulu, or GMT).

There is a large header of metadata, then column headers, then the data. A sample data record is provided below.

Additional information about the data format, data processing, and instrument descriptions is found in the companion file: http://daac.ornl.gov/daacdata/safari2k/atmospheric/met_profile_SA/comp/met_profile_SA_readme.pdf

Document Information:

2004/7/1

Document Review Date:

2004/7/1

Document Curator:

webmaster@www.daac.ornl.gov

Document URL: