Overview of the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive

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This paper provides a general description of the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA), a new radiosonde dataset from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). IGRA consists of radiosonde and pilot balloon observations at more than 1500 globally distributed stations with varying periods of record, many of which extend from the 1960s to present. Observations include pressure, temperature, geopotential height, dewpoint depression, wind direction, and wind speed at standard, surface, tropopause, and significant levels. IGRA contains quality-assured data from 11 different sources. Rigorous procedures are employed to ensure proper station identification, eliminate duplicate levels within soundings, and select one sounding for every station, date, and time. The quality assurance algorithms check for format problems, physically implausible values, internal inconsistencies among variables, runs of values across soundings and levels, climatological outliers, and temporal and vertical inconsistencies... Abstract This paper provides a general description of the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA), a new radiosonde dataset from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). IGRA consists of radiosonde and pilot balloon observations at more than 1500 globally distributed stations with varying periods of record, many of which extend from the 1960s to present. Observations include pressure, temperature, geopotential height, dewpoint depression, wind direction, and wind speed at standard, surface, tropopause, and significant levels. IGRA contains quality-assured data from 11 different sources. Rigorous procedures are employed to ensure proper station identification, eliminate duplicate levels within soundings, and select one sounding for every station, date, and time. The quality assurance algorithms check for format problems, physically implausible values, internal inconsistencies among variables, runs of values across soundings and levels, climatological outliers, and temporal and vertical inconsistencies...

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