Radiosonde Parameter Calculation Data Sets Grow at 2 ARM Sites

Published: 18 October 2023

New and historical data from the Convective Parameters Derived from Radiosonde Data value-added product (SONDEPARAM VAP) are now available for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility’s Southern Great Plains (SGP) and Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) atmospheric observatories.

SONDEPARAM applies stable and consistent algorithms from Wang et al. (2020) for calculating useful radiosonde convective cloud parameters, including convective available potential energy, convective inhibition, and lifting condensation level/level of neutral buoyancy/level of free convection. Because the calculation of these parameters is highly sensitive to the initial parcel characteristics, several parcel options are included (i.e., surface-based, most unstable, mixed layer).

More information about SONDEPARAM can be found on the VAP web page.

Scientists can use the SGP and ENA data now. Data start from April 1, 2001, at the SGP and September 28, 2013, at the ENA. Production data from both observatories are available within two to three days of the current date.

Access the data in the ARM Data Center. (Create an account to download the data.)

To ask questions or report data issues, please contact ARM translator Scott Giangrande, VAP developer Aifang Zhou, or scientist Dié Wang.

When citing the SONDEPARAM data, please use doi:10.5439/1827079.

Reference: Wang D, MP Jensen, JA D’Iorio, G Jozef, SE Giangrande, KL Johnson, ZJ Luo, M Starzec, and GL Mullendore. 2020. “An Observational Comparison of Level of Neutral Buoyancy and Level of Maximum Detrainment in Tropical Deep Convective Clouds.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 125(16), e2020JD032637, doi:10.1029/2020JD032637.