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The Organization of Tropical Rainfall: Observed convective aggregation data across the Tropics

This dataset contains about 5 years of analysed observations regarding the degree of convective aggregation, or clumping, across the tropics - these are averaged onto a large-scale grid. There are also additional variables which represent environmental fields (e.g. sea surface temperature from satellite data, or humidity profiles averaged from reanalysis data) averaged onto the same large-scale grid. The main aggregation index is the Simple Convective Aggregation Index (SCAI) originally defined in Tobin et al. 2012, Journal of Climate. The data were created during the main years of CloudSat and Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite data so that they could be compared with vertical cloud profiles from this satellite data, and the results of this analysis appear in Stein et al. 2017, Journal of Climate.

Each file is one year of data (although the year may not be complete).

Each variable is an array: var(nlon, nlat, [nlev], ntime)

longitude, latitude, pressure, time are variables in each file

units are attributes of each variable (except non-dimensional ones)

missing_value is 3.0E20 and is an attribute of each variable

Time is in days since 19790101:00Z and is every 3hours at 00z, 03z, ...

The actual temporal frequency of the data is described for each variable below.

The data is for each 10deg X 10deg lat/lon box, 30S-30N (at outer edges of box domain), with each box defined by its centre coordinates and with boxes overlapping each other by 5deg in each direction.

In general, each variable is a spatial average over each box, with the value set to missing if more than 15% of the box is missing data.

Exceptions to this are given below.

The most important exception is for the brightness temperature data, used in aggregation statistics, which is filled in using neighborhood averaging if no more than 5% of the pixels are missing, but otherwise is considered to be all missing data. The percentage of missing pixels is recorded in 'bt_miss_frac'.

Simple

Date (Publication)
2018-02-09T09:19:04
Date (Creation)
2018-02-09T09:19:04
Identifier
https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/f3f8337c838c4602876d43f56d878515
Identifier
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) / f3f8337c838c4602876d43f56d878515
Author
  Unavailable - Holloway, Christopher ( author )
Custodian
  Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) - custodian
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell , Oxon , OX11 0QX , United Kingdom
01235446432
Owner
  Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) - data_owner
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell , Oxon , OX11 0QX , United Kingdom
01235446432
Distributor
  Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) - distributor
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell , Oxon , OX11 0QX , United Kingdom
01235446432
Principal investigator
  Unavailable - Holloway, Christopher ( principal_investigator )
pointofContact
  Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) - point_of_contact
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell , Oxon , OX11 0QX , United Kingdom
01235446432
Publisher
  Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) - publisher
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell , Oxon , OX11 0QX , United Kingdom
01235446432
Maintenance and update frequency
unknown Unknown
Update scope
dataset Dataset
Keywords
  • convective aggregation
  • Tropics
  • SCAI
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
  • atmospheric conditions
Access constraints
otherRestrictions Other restrictions
Other constraints
Access to these data is available to any registered CEDA user. Please Login or Register for a CEDA account to gain access.
Use constraints
otherRestrictions Other restrictions
Other constraints
Under the following licence https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/licences/missing_licence.pdf, appropriate use of these data may fall under unstated use. This message is intended as guidance, always read the full licence. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.
Spatial representation type
grid Grid
Metadata language
EnglishEnglish
Topic category
  • Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere
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Begin date
2006-06-14T23:00:00
End date
2011-04-17T22:59:59
Unique resource identifier
WGS 84
Distribution format
  • Data are netCDF formatted ()

Distributor
  Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) - Data Center Contact
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell , Oxon , OX11 0QX , United Kingdom
01235446432
OnLine resource
CEDA Data Catalogue Page

Detail and access information for the resource

OnLine resource
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Hierarchy level
dataset Dataset

Conformance result

Date (Publication)
2010-12-08
Statement
The data were collected from various online data repositories and analysed at the University of Reading.
File identifier
f3f8337c838c4602876d43f56d878515 XML
Metadata language
EnglishEnglish
Character set
8-bit variable size UCS Transfer Format, based on ISO/IEC 10646 UTF8
Parent identifier
The Organization of Tropical Rainfall: MetUM model data and observed convective aggregation data for the Tropics 18c737a986094b1abd19cfebc9d0c374
Hierarchy level
dataset Dataset
Date stamp
2025-11-15T03:15:18
Metadata standard name
UK GEMINI
Metadata standard version
2.3
Point of contact
  Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell , Oxon , OX11 0QX , United Kingdom
01235446432
 
 

Overviews

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W
thumbnail


Keywords

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
atmospheric conditions

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