CSAPR2 cell-tracking data collected during TRACER

Overview:

One of the challenges of analyzing convective cell properties is quick evolution of the individual convective cells.  While the operational radar data provide great a data set to analyze the evolution of radar observables of convective precipitation clouds statistically, previous studies also suggested that, because of the quick evolution of cell life cycle, conventional radar volume scan strategies taking ~5-7 minutes might not capture the detailed evolution. The TRACER campaign deployed CSAPR2, which performed frequent update of RHI and sector PPI scans to track convective cells every < 2 minutes guided by a new cell-tracking framework, Multisensor Agile Adaptive Sampling (MAAS; Kollias et al. 2020). This allows for capturing fast-evolving radar observables. The submitted data files are CSAPR2 data in CfRadial format collected during the TRACER field campaign from June to September 2020. The data files include processed radar variables including: noise-masked reflectivity and differential reflectivity corrected for rain attenuation and systematic biases, noise-masked dealiased radial velocity, specific differential phase, locations of target cells (latitude, longitude, radar range), and radar-echo classification. 

 

Metadata Creator:
Name: Mariko Oue
Email: mariko.oue@stonybrook.edu Phone: 631-632-8700
Street: School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences City: Stony Brook
State: NY Postal: 11794
Contact Info:
Name: Mariko Oue
Email: mariko.oue@stonybrook.edu Phone: 631-632-8700
Street: School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences City: Stony Brook
State: NY Postal: 11794
Investigator(s): Mariko Oue (mariko.oue@stonybrook.edu) 0000-0001-8223-0261
Bernat Puigdoménech-Treserras (bernat.puigdomenech-treserras@mcgill.ca)
Edward Luke (eluke@bnl.gov)
Pavlos Kollias (pavlos.kollias@stonybrook.edu)
Related Publications/References:
Helmus, J.J. and Collis, S.M., (2016), The Python ARM Radar Toolkit (Py-ART), a Library for Working with Weather Radar Data in the Python Programming Language. Journal of Open Research Software. 4(1), p.e25. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jors.119
Kollias, P., Luke, E., Oue, M., and Lamer, K. (2020), Agile adaptive radar sampling of fast-evolving atmospheric phenomena guided by satellite imagery and surface cameras. Geophysical Research Letters, 45, e2020GL088440. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL088440.
Bell, M. M., Dixon, M., Lee, W.-C., Javornik, B., DeHart, J., Cha, T.-Y., and DesRosiers, A. (2022). nsf-lrose/lrose-topaz: lrose-topaz stable final release 20220222 (lrose-topaz-2022022). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6909479
Data Citation:https://doi.org/10.5439/1969992
Data Format:NetCDF4, CfRadial
File Naming Convention:Generally the filename has “houcsapr2ppirhicelltrack.lv2.yyyymmddhhnnss.nc” The first three characters “hou” represent the Houston site. The following characters “csapr2” represent the name of the radar “CSAPR2”. The following characters “ppirhi” represent that the data file includes PPI and RHI scans. This part sometimes has “ppi” or “rhi” only if the file includes data from PPI or RHI only. “lv2” means “Level2” product including processed data.
Directory Organization:The data files are stored in the subdirectory named the date (yyyymmdd).
Abstract:

One of the challenges of analyzing convective cell properties is quick evolution of the individual convective cells.  While the operational radar data provide great a data set to analyze the evolution of radar observables of convective precipitation clouds statistically, previous studies also suggested that, because of the quick evolution of cell life cycle, conventional radar volume scan strategies taking ~5-7 minutes might not capture the detailed evolution. The TRACER campaign deployed CSAPR2, which performed frequent update of RHI and sector PPI scans to track convective cells every < 2 minutes guided by a new cell-tracking framework, Multisensor Agile Adaptive Sampling (MAAS; Kollias et al. 2020). This allows for capturing fast-evolving radar observables. The submitted data files are CSAPR2 data in CfRadial format collected during the TRACER field campaign from June to September 2020. The data files include processed radar variables including: noise-masked reflectivity and differential reflectivity corrected for rain attenuation and systematic biases, noise-masked dealiased radial velocity, specific differential phase, locations of target cells (latitude, longitude, radar range), and radar-echo classification. 

 
Purpose:

CSAPR2 performed frequent update of range-height indicator (RHI) and sector plan position indicator (PPI) scans targeting convective cell lifecycles during the TRACER field campaign. The radar scans were guided by the Multisensor Agile Adaptive Sampling (MAAS, Kollias et al. 2020) using eternal sources of measurements (i.e. satellite). 

The data can be used to analyze fast-evolved radar observables (e.g., reflectivity, Doppler velocity, specific differential phase, and differential reflectivity) of individual deep convective clouds observed in Houston in the summer 2022. The analysis using the dataset can help to improve understanding convective cell structure and lifecycle.
Data Usage:The data format of this product is CfRadial NetCDF (https://www.eol.ucar.edu/system/files/CfRadialDoc.v1.4.20160801.pdf). Each file includes data from one cycle which is generally consisted of 1-3 sector PPI scans and/or several RHI scans. The target cell for each RHI scan can be identified a variable “target_label” (=1) or variables “target_distance,” “target_latitude,” and “target_longitude.” If the scan did not target any specific cells, those variables may have 0 or NAN. Please note that the target cell information is not included if the cell tracking was performed as a “manual tracking mode”, although you may be able to identify cells in the data. Contact the dataset authors if there are questions. The radar was located at 30.16937 degrees N, -95.76929 degrees E, 12 m above sea level.
Arm Sites: hou
Other Sites:
SitesNorthWestSouthEast
S2: Houston, TX; Supplemental Facility 229.532-95.28429.532-95.284
Content Time Range: Begin: 2022-06-04 End: 2022-09-20
Data Type:research data - ASR funded
Scientific Measurements(s):
Measurement nameVariables
C-band polarimetric radarcorrected_reflectivity_horizontal
corrected_differential_reflectivity
specific_differential_phase
radar_echo_classification
total_attenuation
total_differential_attenuation
corrected_velocity
target_label
target_distance
target_latitude
target_longitude
correlation_coefficient
differential_phase
elevation
azimuth
range
time
signal_to_noise_ratio
time_coverage_end
time_coverage_start
sweep_start_ray_index
sweep_end_ray_index
sweep_mode_flag
sweep_mode
spectrum_width
scan_rate
radar_beam_width
prt
pulse_width
nyquist_velocity
n_samples
mean_doppler_velocity
differential_reflectivity
reflectivity
differential_phase
altitude
altitude_agl
longitude
latitude
Stratum Keyword(s):
Convective cell
Data Quality:
Attribute Accuracy: No formal uncertainty assessments were conducted and no estimates of uncertainty are reported.
Positional Accuracy: No formal positional accuracy tests were conducted
Consistency and Completeness Report: Data set is considered complete for the information presented, as described in the abstract. Users are advised to read the rest of the metadata record carefully for additional details.
Use Restrictions: No use constraints are associated with this data.
Tools:
Tool/Model Description: We used LROSE software (http://lrose.net/) to convert the CSAPR2 GAMIC output into CfRadial format and perform attenuation corrections for reflectivity and differential reflectivity and radar echo classification. LROSE is open-source software to analyze radar data developed by Colorado State University (CSU) under a support from National Science Foundation (NSF). We also used the dealias_region_based function built in PyART (https://arm-doe.github.io/pyart-docs-travis/index.html ) to dealias mean Doppler velocity.
Distribution Info:
Organization Name: ARM Archive User Services
Email: armarchive[at]ornl.gov Phone: 1-888-ARM-DATA
Street: Oak Ridge National Laboratory City: Oak Ridge
State: Tennessee Postal: 37831-6290