NASA UARS Project: Correlative Atmospheric Data from NOAA and UKMO

NOAA's National Meteorological Center and the U.K. Meteorological Office provide daily 12 GMT model runs for comparison with NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) instruments. The data includes temperature, humidity, geopotential height, and wind components across 18 standard pressure levels from 1000 to 0.4 millibars. These gridded fields are derived from assimilating radiosondes, aircraft, satellites, and other conventional sources.

Use Cases

• Validate UARS satellite instrument readings based on independent model analyses.
• Analyze atmospheric dynamics based on temperature, geopotential height, and wind component fields.
• Study stratospheric conditions based on data from 70 to 0.4 mb pressure levels.
• Assess data coverage and quality based on the included geographical data richness file indicating radiosonde locations.

Strengths

• Data is derived from two independent operational analysis systems (NOAA NMC and UKMO).
• Includes multiple atmospheric variables (temperature, humidity, height, winds) across 18 pressure levels.
• Tropospheric fields incorporate data from diverse sources like radiosondes, aircraft, and satellites.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Moisture and wind data have limited hemispheric coverage as described.

Provenance

Source

NOAA's National Meteorological Center (NMC) and the U.K. Meteorological Office (UKMO).

Collection Method

Daily model runs at 12 GMT from operational assimilation systems merging conventional and satellite data.

Time Range

The description notes vertical velocity data from UKMO is available from 26 August 1992 forward, suggesting a start date in the early 1990s.

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Global, with data on a 65x65 NMC polar stereographic grid; moisture data is northern hemisphere only.