All historical Radiative Flux Analysis value-added product (RADFLUXANAL VAP) data for the broadband radiometer station (BRS) at the Southern Great Plains atmospheric observatory have been reprocessed to propagate corrections recently made in input data.
RADFLUXANAL calculates clear-sky irradiance in the shortwave and longwave surface fluxes from the measured broadband irradiance at Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility sites. This VAP also calculates fractional sky cover and cloud parameters, including effective visible cloud optical depth, cloud radiating temperature, and shortwave cloud transmissivity, from the measurements.
RADFLUXANAL uses data from the Data Quality Assessment for ARM Radiation Data (QCRAD) VAP. Recent reprocessing of QCRAD fixed a temperature units bug that caused incorrect Dutton coefficients to be created. The Dutton coefficients are used in infrared loss correction for the unshaded pyranometer, which is the source of the global downwelling shortwave hemispheric irradiance variable (down_short_hemisp) in the QCRAD VAP output. The data for this variable were shifted downward by about 10–15 W/m2 at the peak of the signal. (Please note that down_short_hemisp is sometimes used in the best estimate of total downwelling shortwave data.)
(See this July 2021 data announcement for more information about the QCRAD reprocessing.)
The historical RADFLUXANAL BRS data incorporating the reprocessed QCRAD are from March 21, 1997, to July 30, 2019.
Scientists can use the new RADFLUXANAL data now. Access the data in the ARM Data Center. (Go here to create an account to download the data.)
More information about RADFLUXANAL can be found on the VAP web page. For questions about the VAP, please contact ARM translator Damao Zhang or developer Krista Gaustad.
To cite the RADFLUXANAL BRS data, please use doi:10.5439/1395069.
# # #ARM is a DOE Office of Science user facility operated by nine DOE national laboratories.