Abstract
Abstract. A scientific approach is presented to aggregate and harmonize a set of 60 geophysical variables at hourly timescale over a decade, and to allow multiannual and multi-variable studies combining atmospheric dynamics and thermodynamics, radiation, clouds and aerosols from ground-based observations. Many datasets from ground-based observations are currently in use worldwide. They are very valuable because they contain complete and precise information due to their spatio-temporal co-localization over more than a decade. These datasets, in particular the synergy between different type of observations, are under-used because of their complexity and diversity due to calibration, quality control, treatment, format, temporal averaging, metadata, etc. Two main results are presented in this article: (1) a set of methods available for the community to robustly and reliably process ground-based data at an hourly timescale over a decade is described and (2) a single netCDF file is provided based on the SIRTA supersite observations. This file contains approximately 60 geophysical variables (atmospheric and in ground) hourly averaged over a decade for the longest variables. The netCDF file is available and easy to use for the community. In this article, observations are “re-analyzed”. The prefix “re” refers to six main steps: calibration, quality control, treatment, hourly averaging, homogenization of the formats and associated metadata, as well as expertise on more than a decade of observations. In contrast, previous studies (i) took only some of these six steps into account for each variable, (ii) did not aggregate all variables together in a single file and (iii) did not offer an hourly resolution for about 60 variables over a decade (for the longest variables). The approach described in this article can be applied to different supersites and to additional variables. The main implication of this work is that complex atmospheric observations are made readily available for scientists who are non-experts in measurements. The dataset from SIRTA observations can be downloaded at http://sirta.ipsl.fr/reobs.html (last access: April 2017) (Downloads tab, no password required) under https://doi.org/10.14768/4F63BAD4-E6AF-4101-AD5A-61D4A34620DE.
Highlights
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) simulations show a large spread between models when predicting future climate at a global scale, and when representing the observed current climate
This paper presents two main results: (1) a set of methods available for the community to process groundbased data robustly and reliably at an hourly timescale over at least a decade and (2) provision of a single netCDF file containing about 60 substantial geophysical variables hourly averaged over 15 years for the oldest ones, and usable for the community
5 Data availability The ReOBS processing chain has been applied to SIRTA ground-based measurements and leads to the production of a single netCDF file containing about 60 substantial geophysical variables hourly averaged over a period of up to a decade
Summary
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) simulations show a large spread between models when predicting future climate at a global scale, and when representing the observed current climate. These model uncertainties are larger at the regional scale and at short timescales (e.g., seasonal scale). Observations of the atmosphere must be considered in order to improve both our knowledge of the processes that create this temporal variability and the simulation uncertainties. These observations must describe atmospheric processes that involve a large number of variables in the atmospheric columns and in the ground, and at various spatial and temporal scales
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