Notice

7.1 General Comments

The CASES 97 investigators recognize the importance of developing a consistent, high quality dataset from this first field study, while contributing to the longer term measurement activities of CASES as well. The CASES-97 PIs will make every effort to provide data in a usable format within six months of the end of the field season.

Data quality control will generally be the responsibility of the investigators collecting the data. All documentation related to a particular dataset should be made available to those requesting the data for their analysis activities. Precise descriptions of how parameters are measured (instrument type, sampling rate, averaging time) and derived quantities (e.g., fluxes) will be particularly important in CASES-97 to aid in the intercomparison of various measurements of the same quantity.

There have been no prior specifications placed on the format of data for CASES-97. It is important that the investigators try to standardize certain critical parameters like time in order to simplify the exchange and use of the data. It is suggested that the following date/time group convention be considered as necessary and be included on all final datasets. The time unit will be UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), it is desirable to document the observations in YYMMDDHHMMSS.SS where YY=year, MM=month, DD=day, HH=hour, MM=minute, SS.SS=seconds and decimal seconds as appropriate. There will, of course, be a few exceptions. The time of sidereal noon will be calculated for all surface flux sites. A mean value of sidereal noon will be determined from the location of the centroid of the CASES 97 array, as defined by the location of the profilers.

Plans are now in place to collect a variety of supplementary operational datasets. TABLE 7.1 lists all the datasets that will be collected in cooperation with the GEWEX Continental-Scale International Project (GCIP) Enhanced Observing Period (EOP) activities underway simultaneously with CASES-97. These data are being collected in cooperation with the UCAR Joint Office for Science Support (JOSS). This information will be made available after the completion of the CASES field season. No special processing of these data is planned for CASES.

A very limited subset of operational products will be provided by JOSS to the PIs coordinating operations during the field season. These will consist of weather forecast products, satellite imagery , surface analyses and radar data from several WWW sites around the country. These data are found at ftp://storm.joss.ucar.edu/pub/download/cases/PRODUCTS/.

7.2 Data Needs for CASES-97

CASES-97 will rely on several data sets in addition to those collected during the field program. Archival of virtually all of the needed datasets will be done for GEWEX/GCIP by the Joint Office of Science Support (JOSS) of UCAR. Other necessary data is being archived at other centers. JOSS has agreed to archive the small amount of additional data needed. Data needs, sources, and expected availability are summarized in Table 7.1.

Table 7.1. Data sets for CASES-97

 7.1a. Data collected as part of the experiment

 7.1b. SUPPLEMENTARY DATA. These data will be gathered for GEWEX/GCIP by UCAR/JOSS, for a 1000 x 1400 km domain that contains the GCIP domain (Fig. 1.2). The CASES domain is in the middle of the north-south direction, and about one-third of the way from the east to the west edge.

7.1c. Data from satellite

CASES-97 will not obtain SPOT or Landsat data but will use that available to CASES scientists from the EROS data center or other data centers as appropriate.

7.1d. Model data

For geostrophic and thermal wind calculations (off net)

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Last Modified: 20 Aug 1997