ASTEX Radiosonde Soundings from the Valdivia Ship

Radiosonde data were collected from the Valdivia ship during the Atlantic Stratocumulus Transition Experiment from May 28 to June 22, 1992. The dataset contains interpolated atmospheric soundings at 5-second, 20-meter, and 2-millibar resolutions. It was produced by the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center to support cloud and radiation process studies.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between pressure, height, and temperature to validate atmospheric boundary layer models.
• Study the correlation between relative humidity, dew point, and mixing ratio to understand cloud formation processes.
• Model wind speed and direction profiles over the ocean to characterize marine atmospheric conditions.
• Use the time-series of ascent rate and height to calibrate radiosonde instrument performance.
• Investigate the temporal evolution of atmospheric profiles using the launch date-time group (YYMMDDHHMM) and minutes/seconds past launch.

Strengths

• Data covers a focused 26-day field campaign designed for process studies.
• Provides three levels of interpolated data (5-second, 20-meter, 2-millibar) for analysis flexibility.
• Each profile contains up to 1500 data lines with multiple atmospheric variables per measurement.

Limitations

• Temporal coverage is limited to a single month in 1992, restricting long-term trend analysis.
• Geographic scope is confined to the ship track of the Valdivia during ASTEX, not globally representative.
• Data structure with a 5-line header and specific formatting may require custom parsing.

Provenance

Source

NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center (LARC_ASDC).

Collection Method

Collected via radiosonde launches from the Valdivia ship during the FIRE ASTEX field campaign.

Time Range

1992-05-28 to 1992-06-22

Freshness

Data collection ended on 1992-06-22; it is a historical dataset from a specific field experiment.

Geography

Marine region along the track of the Valdivia ship during the ASTEX experiment.