Airborne radar reflectivity and brightness temperature measurements with POLAR 5 during ACLOUD in May and June 2017

• Main Authors: Kliesch, Leif-Leonard, Mech, Mario
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2019
• Subjects: AC; AC3; ACLOUD; airborne; Aircraft; Arctic; Arctic Amplification; Arctic Cloud Observations Using airborne measurements during polar Day; brightness temperature; clouds; Date/Time of event; Event label; File format; File name; File size; Flight 04; Flight 05; Flight 06; Flight 07; Flight 08; Flight 10; Flight 11; Flight 14; Flight 15; Flight 16; Flight 17; Flight 18; Flight 19; Flight 20; Flight 21; Flight 22; Flight 23; Flight 25; FMCW; microwave; MiRAC; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1705230601; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1705250701; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1705270801; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1705270902; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1705291001; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1705311101; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1706021201; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1706081401; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1706091501; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1706131601; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1706141701; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1706161801; P5_206_ACLOUD_2017_1706171901; Arctic Ocean; Svalbard; Longyearbyen; Alfred Wegener Institute; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.899565; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.899565

During the Arctic CLoud Observations Using airborne measurements during polar Day (ACLOUD) campaign in summer 2017 conducted from Longyearbyen/Svalbard, a combination of active and passive microwave instruments MiRAC (Microwave Radar/radiometer for Arctic Clouds) has been operated on board of the Polar 5 research aircraft of the Alfred-Wegener Institute for polar and ocean research (AWI). MiRAC contains a Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar at 94 GHz mounted in a belly pod under 25deg backwards inclined with respect to nadir. Included is also the 89 GHz passive channel and a passive microwave instrument with six channels in the 183 GHz water vapor line and channels at 243 and 340 GHz installed nadir pointing in the cabin. The data set was collected during approximately 80 flight hours in May/June 2017 northwest of Svalbard over the Arctic ocean and sea ice. It contains the unfiltered reflectivity profiles as well as the filtered profiles. Both profiles are corrected for aircraft motion and instrument/aircraft orientation. The filters consider disturbances due to the signal processing, side lobe effects, and removal of speckles. Furthermore, quality flags for the radar reflectivity are included in the data set. For the passive component, the brightness temperatures at 89 GHz are included without considering the observation geometry. The data set is completed by information recorded by the aircraft system (latitude, longitude, flight height, pitch, roll, and flight speed). The data are stored as netCDF format and each file contains data for one research flight (except for the 17th and 23rd of June 2017). For the higher passive microwave channels a separate dataset will be provided. For detailed information on the instruments and the processing see Mech et al. 2019 (doi:10.5194/amt-2019-151). The campaign ACLOUD is described in Wendisch et al. 2018 (doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0072.1).