Description
Frequent observations were carried out with the Rayleigh-scatter lidar at Utah State University’s Atmospheric Lidar Observatory (41.742572° N, 111.808273° W, and 1466 m) from August 1993 through December 2004. Of 964 nights observed, a total of 839 nights were judged good for deriving temperatures. These 839 were reduced to obtain all-night relative neutral densities and absolute temperatures. These results extend from 45 to ≤ 95 km, thereby covering the mesosphere. This netCDF file starts by giving the number of nights included in the file. For each night, the netCDF file then provides defining parameters and derived profiles, as defined below.
The parameters are
- start date for the observations (UTC) [mm/dd/yy],
- start time for the observations (UTC) [hh:mm:ss],
- end time for the observations (UTC) [hh:mm:ss],
- number of altitude bins,
- number of data profiles combined to make the all-night relative density profile and absolute temperature profile,
- maximum altitude (of the initial temperature) ≤ 95 km [m],
- minimum temperature altitude ≥ 45 km [m], and
- initial temperature [K].
The profiles are
- altitude of each data point above mean sea level [m],
- relative all-night neutral density [normalized to 1.00 at 45 km],
- uncertainty of relative neutral density [%],
- data quality flag for density [good/bad],
- all-night absolute temperature [K],
- temperature uncertainty [K], and
- data quality flag for temperature [good/bad].
The netCDF file includes this documentation and gives the location of each parameter and profile.
Author ORCID Identifier
Vincent B Wickwar https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5021-2525
Joshua P. Herron https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8676-5834
OCLC
1078403892
Document Type
Dataset
DCMI Type
Dataset
File Format
.nc
Viewing Instructions
.nc is the extension for NetCDF format. These files contain contain metadata which aid interpretation of the data. The metadata and data can be explored using the free Panoply software tool (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/). The files can also be manipulated using Unidata's free netCDF tools, a set of libraries that provide interfaces in the Java, C, C++, Fortran, and Perl programming languages.
Publication Date
2-9-2018
Funder
NSF, Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences
Publisher
Utah State University
Award Number
NSF, Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences 9203034; NSF, Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences 9302118; NSF, Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences 9714789; NSF, Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences 0123145; NSF, Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences 0531397
Methodology
See Readme file for description of data collection and processing.
Referenced by
Herron and Wickwar (2018), Mid-Latitude Climatologies of Mesospheric Temperature and Geophysical Temperature Variability Determined with the Rayleigh-Scatter Lidar at ALO-USU, submitted to Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, 2018JD028450, Available from https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/physics_facpub/2063/
Language
eng
Disciplines
Atmospheric Sciences
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Wickwar, V. B., & Herron, J. P. (2018). Mesospheric Densities and Temperatures Derived from 11 Years of Data Acquired with the Rayleigh-Scatter Lidar at the Atmospheric Lidar Observatory at Utah State University. Utah State University. https://doi.org/10.15142/T3VP81
Checksum
2a73453daa1f7d00ba657b8d78ff8540
Additional Files
ReadMe.txt (7 kB)MD5: de72d3fc90cda9a965fcd8eb1a68e610
ALO-USU_Rayleigh_lidar_Nightly.nc (45253 kB)
MD5: 156afb26d0035b26f881f5b1a16e0e21
Comments
The netCDF file provides documentation and and gives the location of each parameter and profile.
Rules for using these data are outlined in the Readme file.