Tool to assess contents of ARM surface meteorology network netCDF files

• Main Authors: Staudt, A., Kwan, T., Tichler, J.
• Other Authors: United States. Department of Energy.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Brookhaven National Laboratory 1995
• Subjects: Radiation Flux; Information Systems; Clouds; Data Processing; Meteorology; 99 Mathematics; Computers; Information Science; Management; Law; Miscellaneous; 58 Geosciences; 54 Environmental Sciences; Data Compilation; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Pacific; north slope; Alaska
• Online Access: http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc625486/

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program, supported by the US Department of Energy, is a major program of atmospheric measurement and modeling designed to improve the understanding of processes and properties that affect atmospheric radiation, with a particular focus on the influence of clouds and the role of cloud radiative feedback in the climate system. The ARM Program will use three highly instrumented primary measurement sites. Deployment of instrumentation at the first site, located in the Southern Great Plains of the United States, began in May of 1992. The first phase of deployment at the second site in the Tropical Western Pacific is scheduled for late in 1995. The third site will be in the North Slope of Alaska and adjacent Arctic Ocean. To meet the scientific objectives of ARM, observations from the ARM sites are combined with data from other sources; these are called external data. Among these external data sets are surface meteorological observations from the Oklahoma Mesonet, a Kansas automated weather network, the Wind Profiler Demonstration Network (WPDN), and the National Weather Service (NWS) surface stations. Before combining these data with the Surface Meteorological Observations Station (SMOS) ARM data, it was necessary to assess the contents and quality of both the ARM and the external data sets. Since these data sets had previously been converted to netCDF format for use by the ARM Science Team, a tool was written to assess the contents of the netCDF files.