Ka-Band ARM Zenith Radar Product Resumes for 2 Sites

 
Published: 19 May 2021
KAZRARSCL time-versus-height plots of cloud boundaries, best-estimate hydrometeor reflectivity, and dealiased mean Doppler velocity for a sample date at Oliktok Point, Alaska
This set of plots illustrates the KAZRARSCL product. From top to bottom are time-versus-height plots of cloud boundaries, best-estimate hydrometeor reflectivity, and dealiased mean Doppler velocity for a sample date at Oliktok Point, Alaska.

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility has resumed production of the Ka-Band ARM Zenith Radar Active Remote Sensing of CLouds (KAZRARSCL) value-added product for the Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) atmospheric observatory and Oliktok Point, Alaska.

From late December 2019 to May 2020, KAZRARSCL was not in production for the ENA and Oliktok Point sites because of a major format change in the input KAZR datastream. Previous releases are unaffected by this change.

KAZRARSCL helps scientists more easily use corrected observations from ARM vertically pointing cloud radars, as well as hydrometeor masks and cloud boundaries.

The new KAZRARSCL releases cover the period from December 2019 through March 2021 at the ENA and Oliktok Point sites.

KAZRARSCL combines KAZR, micropulse lidar, ceilometer, sounding, and microwave radiometer input observations to produce two datastreams. The arsclkazr1kollias datastream provides best-estimate radar reflectivities, mean Doppler velocities, spectral widths, and a significant detection mask in time and height. This datastream also provides up to 10 layers of cloud boundaries (cloud base and cloud top) and best-estimate cloud base. The smaller arsclkazrbnd1kollias datastream provides only cloud boundaries and cloud base.

This product is available in daily files. It provides vertical profiles every four seconds from approximately 160 meters above ground level up to 18 kilometers, with 30-meter height resolution.

The new KAZRARSCL data from the ENA and Oliktok Point are available to use now.

More information about KAZRARSCL is available on its web page. To ask questions, provide feedback, or report data problems, please contact Karen Johnson or Scott Giangrande.

Access the data in the ARM Data Center. (Go here to create an account to download the data.)

To cite the KAZRARSCL data, please use doi:10.5439/1393437 for arsclkazr1kollias and doi:10.5439/1393438 for arsclkazrbnd1kollias.

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ARM is a DOE Office of Science user facility operated by nine DOE national laboratories.