Historical Arctic Atmospheric Soundings from Land Stations, 1947-1996

The Historical Arctic Rawinsonde Archive (HARA) contains millions of vertical atmospheric soundings from land stations north of 65 degrees North. It provides temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind data from the beginning of records, with most starting in the late 1950s and a few as early as 1947, through mid-1996. The dataset is maintained by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term trends in Arctic atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles.
• Studying historical pressure and wind patterns at different altitudes for climate model validation.
• Investigating changes in geopotential height and upper-level winds over the Arctic region.
• Reconstructing historical weather events using surface and upper-air wind speed and direction data.

Strengths

• Contains millions of vertical soundings, indicating a large observational volume.
• Covers a multi-decade time range from the late 1940s to mid-1996, providing a long-term record.
• Represents all available rawinsonde ascents from Arctic land stations poleward of 65°N, suggesting completeness for that domain.

Limitations

• The exact row count and dataset size are not specified across all platforms.
• Data collection ended in mid-1996, making it a purely historical archive with no recent observations.
• Sources conflict on the last updated metadata date: one lists 2026-03-13 (likely a metadata update), while another lists 1996-06-30 (the data end date).

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Vertical soundings (rawinsonde ascents) from Arctic land stations.

Time Range

1947 to mid-1996

Freshness

The data itself covers up to mid-1996, though metadata was last updated on 2026-03-13 according to one platform.

Geography

Arctic land stations poleward of 65 degrees North