Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive Imke Durre and Russell

Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive Imke Durre and Russell S. Vose National Climatic Data Center +1 828 271 4870 Imke. Durre@noaa. gov

Overview § Goal – Develop and maintain a global historical archive of radiosonde and pibal observations § Source Data – IGRA version 1. 0 contains 11 source datasets routinely updated with GTS observations § Deliverables – IGRA version 2. 0 (FY 12) § ECVs addressed § Upper air temperature § Wind speed and direction § Water vapor § Current/expected user communities § Assessments and monitoring (RATPAC, Had. AT) § Research and reanalysis 2

Approach § Acquisition – Contact data centers – Exploit personal contacts § Preprocessing – Format standardization – Fundamental sanity checks § Integration – Data comparisons – Station selection and merging 3

Approach § Quality assurance – Basic plausibility – Internal consistency – Repetition of values – Temporal consistency – Vertical consistency § Reprocessing – Annual reprocessing 4

Accomplishments: IGRA version 1 § § § Released in 2005 1538 stations 30 x 106 soundings 11 data sources 1 daily update 2 access points – FTP – NOMADS 5

Accomplishments: IGRA version 1 6

Research-to-Operations Results § Fully operational dataset at NCDC § Daily processing – Updates with soundings from previous day – Places updated dataset on FTP § Monthly processing (5 th day of month) – Computes monthly means and inventories – Places monthly means on FTP – Sends data to the NCDC Archive – Provides inventories to Health of Network 7

Publications § Durre, I. , R. S. Vose, and D. B. Wuertz, 2006: Overview of the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive. Journal of Climate, 19, 53 -68. § Durre, I. , R. S. Vose, and D. B. Wuertz, 2008 a: Robust automated quality assurance of radiosonde temperatures. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 47, 20812095. § Durre, I. and X. Yin, 2008 b: Enhanced radiosonde data for studies of vertical structure. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 89, 1257 -1262. § Durre, I. , C. N. Williams, Jr. , X. Yin, and R. S. Vose, 2009: Radiosonde-based trends in precipitable water over the Northern Hemisphere: An update. Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, 114, doi: 10. 1029/2008 JD 010989. 8

Trends in Precipitable Water (0. 45 mm dec-1) 9

IGRA version 2 § § § 10 Currently in development Acquisition/reformatting (done in FY 10) Preprocessing/standardization (FY 11) Integration (station matching) (FY 12) QA and update system (FY 12)

Acquisition/Reformatting § 92 data sets considered § 42 collections reformatted (major effort) § Priorities – Pre-1963 collections – Data-sparse areas – Recently digitized (CDMP) – Used by other reanalyses 11

Examples of New Source Datasets § Non-IGRA version 1 data sets from NCDC archive – Brazil, China, marine § MIT and C-CARDS from NCAR (pre-1963) § Bronnimann acquisitions (primarily Europe) § Other diverse archives – British Antarctic Survey, Historical Arctic Radiosonde Archive § CDMP data – Malawi, Senegal, Kenya, Mozambique, Niger, U. S. , Zambia § French West African data – Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Togo 12

IGRA v 1 IGRA v 2 13

Russian GTS Data § Comparison – U. S. and Russian GTS data are ~99% identical – But Russian GTS has some data not in U. S. GTS § IGRA v 1 – Only used Russian GTS data for 1998 -2001 – Updates have been sporadic and mainly upon request § IGRA v 2 – Will use Russian GTS data for 1998 -2009 – Other data would be nice 14

Wish List § Regular updates of Russian GTS data – Accessible on a Russian FTP server – NCDC could download automatically (e. g. , monthly) § Documentation for the data – Existing code for reading Russian GTS data is 10 years old – New code could be written using format documentation § Data for previous years – Is 1991 -1997 available? 15