Plans for a Sounding Data Monitoring and Display Facility

at the NAME Operations Center in Tucson

Richard Johnson and Paul Ciesielski

Department of Atmospheric ScienceColorado State University

Overall Goals• to monitor and quality control sounding

data from the 4 ISS sites and other upper-air sites in NAME

• objectively analyze sounding data onto a regular 1ºx 1º latitude/longitude grid

• prepare analysis products in support of operations and forecasting

We’re looking for input as what analysis products would be helpful to the forecasters.

ISS

RV Altair

46-67 day Enhanced Observing Period (EOP)

20 day Intensive Observing Period (IOP)

Quality Control (QC) Procedure and Monitoring of Sounding Data

1. Retrieve all Tier 2 sounding data. At this stage the data are ingested as WMO coded messages (TTAA, TTBB, etc.)

2. Decode data and put it in a common ASCII format.

3. Process soundings through a series of automated QC checks (e.g., gross limit, vertical consistency) and assign QC flags to the data (good, bad or questionable) based on these checks.

4. Visually inspect each sounding on a skew-T plot and flag suspicious looking data.

5. If reoccurring errors are noted at certain sites we’ll try to get this information to responsible persons in the field.

Example of graphical user interface for visually QCing sonde data

• QCed sondes will be put on the web in a graphical skew-T format.

• Time series of sounding data will also be made available on the web.

Time series of sounding data taken from a RV in SCSMEX indicating deep layer moistening and zonal wind changes during the onset of the East Asian Monsoon around 15 May 1998.

onset

• For the EOP (July 1 – August 15) we will objectively analyze sounding data over Tier 2 domain at 00 and 12 UTC.

• For the 20 IOP days we will objectively analyze sounding data over the enhanced sounding array (ESA) at 00, 04, 08, 12, 16 and 20 UTC.

Objective Analyses

• Using a multiquadric interpolation scheme (Nuss and Titley 1994) analyses of u, v, T, q, z fields will be produced on a 1ºx1º grid at 25 mb resolution from the surface to 50 hPa .

• Analysis of horizontal maps of various fields at 1000, 850, 500, and 200 hPa will be put on the web.

• An advantage of these analyses are their independence from operational models such that these analyses are not influenced by the parameterization schemes within the numerical models .

From the analyses of the basic fields (u, v, T, q) we will diagnose vertical motion (), vorticity, divergence, apparent heating (Q1) and apparent moistening (Q2). Time series of these fields can be constructed as shown below.

Time series of diagnosed fields during TOGA COARE; warm shades indicate rising motion, apparent heating and apparent drying.

Q1

Q2

We also plan to construct vertical cross-sections of temperature, moisture, and winds (e.g., along the Gulf, across the Gulf, across Mexico). The actual location of these cross-sections can be tailored to meet the needs of the forecasters.

Vertical cross section (1000-700 hPa) along 28ºN

Colored lines are isotachs of v-wind which is a maximum between the surface and 925 hPa

Green lines depict moisture field. High moisture content confine to east of Baja.

GoCBaja

•If we can obtain the data in near-real time, we’d like to put high resolution time series of RASS and wind profiler data, along with the surface data from the ISS sites on the web. These products should be useful during surge events and other periods with rapidly changing conditions.

•After the field phase of NAME, we plan to carry out a refined set of QC procedures on all sounding data, and to redo our objective analysis using all available data sources (sondes, profilers, pibal obs., surface winds from QuikSCAT, aircraft measurements, etc).

Questions???

• What additional analysis products would be useful?• How can we tailor any of our products to better

meet the needs of the forecasters?• How soon after the observation time would analysis

products be needed? (e.g., how soon after the 12 UTC (6 am) obs would their analysis be needed?)

Feel free to contact us at the following addresses:rhj@atmos.colostate.eduorpaulc@atmos.colostate.edu