Vaisala RS-80 Radiosonde data was collected at the Chesapeake Lighthouse platform during the CLAMS experiment. The dataset was gathered by the LARC_ASDC organization to validate satellite retrievals of cloud and aerosol properties. The last recorded update for this dataset was in August 2001.
Use Cases
- Analyze vertical atmospheric profiles from radiosonde data to characterize temperature, humidity, and pressure layers. Validate space-borne retrievals of cloud properties using in-situ atmospheric measurements from the lighthouse site. Study the impact of polluted urban aerosols from nearby Virginia Beach on marine cloud microphysics. Investigate the variability in aerosol optical depth and Angstrom exponent under different wind conditions (easterly vs. sea breeze).
Strengths
- Data collected from a Coast Guard platform located 25 km from shore, minimizing typical island effects for oceanic sites.
- Site location is characterized by both polluted urban aerosols and clean marine aerosols, enabling comparative studies.
Limitations
- The dataset's last update was in 2001, making it temporally stale for contemporary climate studies.
- Specific data volume (rows), file formats, and measured parameters (columns) are not documented.
Provenance
- Source
- LARC_ASDC via NASA Earthdata.
- Collection Method
- Collected by Vaisala RS-80 Radiosonde instruments deployed from the Chesapeake Lighthouse platform.
- Time Range
- Coverage during the CLAMS experiment period, precise range unknown.
- Freshness
- 2001-08-02
- Geography
- Chesapeake Lighthouse, a platform 25 km east of Virginia near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.