Ozone & Aerosol Sondes Working
              Group NDACC_Logo

The ozone and aerosol sonde working group is responsible for the activities pertaining to ozonesondes and various aerosol sondes. The working group representatives on the streering committe are:

Rene Stubi, Senior Scientist,
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss. Through 2011
Bryan Johnson, Global Monitoring Division, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Elected 2009
Terry Deshler, Professor, Department of Atmospheric Science, University of  Wyoming. Through 2009.

---------------------------------- Notes on Homogenization of ozone sonde data -------------------------------------------

New ------------
O3S-DQA-Guideline_Summary_OzUncertainty_td.pdf - April 2013 - Specific guidance in calculating ozone uncertainty to apply to ozonesonde data as it has been applied to McMurdo Science Pump and ENSCI ozonesonde data. For the latter a transfer function was required for measurements between 1995 and 2005. Examples of ozone data before and after the corrections and uncertainty calculations are applied.

2012/2013 - Guide Lines for Homogenization of Ozone Sonde Data (Nov. 19, 2012).
Prepared by: O3S-DQA panel members on homogenization of O3S-data (Herman Smit, Sam Oltmans, Terry Deshler, David Tarasick, Bryan Johnson, Frank Schmidlin, Rene Stubi, Jonathan Davies)

Specific guidelines on transfer functions to convert 1.0% KI concentration measurements to either 0.5% KI concentration, or ENSCI measurements to Science Pump measurements. Section 8.1.2 of the overall guidelines - Terry Deshler and Rene Stubi.

---------------------------------- Notes on working group meeting ------------------------------------------------------------

Summary of conclusions and recommended actions following the NDACC ozonesonde working group meeting: 5 - 6 February 2009 at the Forschungszentrum ICG-1/2, Juelich, Germany.

1) Data format recommendations for submission of ozonesonde data to NDACC, using a NASA AMES 2160 data format for all new data to be submitted and, to the extent possible, for old data to be resubmitted. The latter is desired to maintain consistency of the data base.

The following documents will guide you in preparing newly formatted data files:. These files were developed by Peter von der Gathen, Pavla Skrivankova, and Terry Deshler. Questions on implementing these recommendations may be addressed to any of us three.

    a) Word document describing the independent, dependent, and auxilliary variables.

    b) Example file when the variables exceed the 132 character limit. Each record requires two lines.
         i) With explanations of the records
         ii) With no explanations - this file passes the data format checker available below.

    c) Example when the variables do not exceed the 132 character limit, Each record is on a single line.
        i) With explanations of the records
        ii) With no explanations - this file passes the data format checker available below.

    d) Code for data format checker, requiring the arbirtrary limits on the number of auxilliary variables and the number of auxilliary character variables to be increased. This code is slightly different than what you may already be using by increasing the limits mentioned. All of this code is to be run from a unix machine.
         i) dataex.f (fortran code), dataex.exe (executable)
        ii) Scripts: np_dataex.csh - to run dataex with minimal prompts
                           dataex.csh to run dataex with full prompts
                           compile_link_dataex.csh to compile and link dataex.f:               


2) The following actions were proposed at the WG meeting, but no further progress has been reported:

    a) Experimental comparison of three pump efficiency measurements (NASA, NOAA, and U. Uwyoming)

    b) Completion of dual flight paper involving measurements in Sodankyla, Payerne, Wallops Island, and McMurdo.

    c) Additional background current measurements following the suggestion that background current may not be characterized properly, particularly in the tropics.

------------------------------------------------End of notes on working group meeting --------------------------------------------------

DAAC Annual Report Form - required from each station once per year, prior to the steering committee meeting. Please email to Terry Deshler and Rene Stubi. The next steering committee meeting is in September 2009.

Standard operating procedures ozonesondes
The standard operating procedures to be used for NDACC ozonesonde operation are those agreed upon after the JOSIE 1996, 1998, and 2000 experiments (Smit et al., 2007) and the BESOS experiment (Deshler et al., 2008). The working draft of the BESOS/JOSIE SOPS is in nearly final form. The recommendation concerning solution strengths is to use the manufacturer's recommended solution strengths, which are 1.0% KI for Science Pump and 0.5% KI for ENSCI. The 0.5% KI solution is to use half of the buffers used for the 1.0% KI.

Current topics of concern:
Data format. The variable options within the NASA-Ames format have allowed individual investigators to use a variety of data formats and to include a variety of ancillary variables. Rene and I feel this variability has led to some difficulties both for the data providers and for the data users. We propose to focus in the coming year on providing some standardized recommendations regarding these points. This will be accomplished by:
1) Summarizing the data formats and ancillary variables currently in use and reported on the NDACC data base.
2) Summarize the format used by the WOUDC
3) Prepare a document to suggest a common data format that could be recommended to the community.
4) Allow NDACC investigators the opportunity to comment on this document.
5) Organize a meeting in earlly 2009 to finalize the working group recommendations.
6) Distribute these recommendations to the community and offer some support for conversion of historical data to the common format.

Homogenization of data sets which were collected using different ozonesonde manufacturers and non standard solution strengths. This may be particularly a problem for investigators which have used 1.0% KI in ENSCI sondes. Preliminary transfer functions have been proposed by Deshler et al. (2008) and Stubi et al. (2008), but additional work is required prior to acceptance of a more final transfer function. Work in this area is anticipated to continue.

Ozonesonde background. There is still uncertainty about which is the best background to use and  the best way to determine that background. Usually this background is determined by a filter measurement. Measurements with zero air are preferable particularly in tropical and humid regions; however, this is often not possible.  Recent work in this area can be found in Voemel et al. (2009) and Stubi et al. (2008). We encourage additional discussion.

Stations

Station name

Lat

Lon

Principal investigator

Alert 82.50°N
62.33°W
David Tarasick, AES
Eureka 80.05°N
86.42°W
David Tarasick,  AES
Ny-Ålesund 78.92°N
11.93°E
Peter von der Gathen, AWI
Thule 76.53°N
68.74°W
Paul Eriksen, DMI
Scoresbysund 70.50°N 22.00°W Paul Eriksen, DMI
Salekhard 66.70°N 66.70°E Valery Dorokhov, CAO
Sodankylä 67.37°N
26.65°E
Rigel Kivi, FMI
Yakutsk 62.03°N 129.63°E Valery Dorokhov, CAO
Legionowo 52.40°N 20.97°E Grzegorz Zablocki, Centre of Aerology IMWM
De Bilt 52.10°N
5.18°E
Marc Allaart, KNMI
Uccle 50.8°N
4.35°E
Hugo De Backer, KMI
Praha
50.02°N
14.45°E
Pavla Skrivankova, Czech Hydrometeorological Institute
Hohenpeissenberg 47.80°N
11.02°E
Hans Claude, DWD
Payerne 46.82°N
6.95°E
René Stubi, MeteoSwiss
Obs. de Haute Provence 43.94°N
5.71°E
Sophie Godin-Beekmann and Gérard Ancellet, CNRS
Boulder
40.??°N
105.??°W
Bryan Johnson, NOAA
Wallops Island 37.94°N
75.46°W
Frank Schmidlin, WFF, NASA
Izaña 28.46°N
16.26°W
Emilio Cuevas and Alberto Redondas, INM
Hilo 19.72°N
155.07°W
Bryan Johnson, NOAA
Paramaribo 5.81°N
55.21°W
Marc Allaart, KNMI
American Samoa
??°N
??°W
Bryan Johnson, NOAA
Île de la Réunion 21.8°S
55.5°E
Françoise Posny, Univ. de la Réunion
Lauder 45.05°S
169.68°E
Greg Bodeker, NIWA
Dumont d'Urville 66.67°S
140.01°E
Marion Marchand, CNRS
Neumayer 70.62°S
8.37°E
Gert König-Langlo, AWI
McMurdo 77.85°S
166.63°E
Terry Deshler, Univ. of Wyoming
South Pole 90.00°S . Bryan Johnson, NOAA

Annual reports from the working group

The ozone and aerosol sonde working group representatives assemble a yearly report on the activities of the measurement sites as well as other relevant activities. These reports are available as PDF documents and can be downloaded by clicking on the links below. From 2001 the reporting takes place via a standardised form (MS Word format) that the station PIs fill in and send to the working group representatives.

2005 Ozonesonde steering committee report to Ozonesonde PIs.

Letter from Mike Kurylo and Geir Braathen explaining the change of name from NDSC to NDACC

Report presented at the SC meeting in Thun, Switzerland, Sept. 2000 (1853 kBytes)

Report presented at the SC meeting in Sapporo, Japan, Oct. 1999 (2593 kBytes)

Report presented at the SC meeting in St. Denis, France, Dec. 1998 (1031 kBytes)

Report presented at the SC meeting in Ny-Ålesund, Norway, Aug. 1997 (59 kBytes)

First Excel sheet that accompanies the 1997 report (374 kBytes).

Second Excel sheet that accompanies the 1997 report (34 kBytes).


Ozonesonde PI meeting, Potsdam, 1998

A meeting for all the ozonesonde PIs of the NDSC and other stations was hosted by AWI, Potsdam in July 1998. The report from this meeting can be downloaded by clicking on the link below.

Minutes of ozonesonde PI meeting in Potsdam, July 1998.