METCRAX ISS Surface Meteorology Data

The Meteor Crater Experiment (METCRAX) is a 3-year meteorological research program supported by the Mesoscale Dynamics Division of the U. S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The program is investigating the structure and evolution of temperature inversions or cold-air pools that form on a daily basis in topographic basins and valleys. As part of this research a one-month-long field experiment will be conducted in October 2006 in Arizona's Meteor Crater, a simple near-ideal topographic basin formed by the impact of a meteor. In this basin, the physical processes leading to the buildup and breakdown of temperature inversions and the formation of atmospheric seiches (atmospheric oscillations in the basin caused by wind disturbances at the basin crest) can be studied without the complications introduced by more complex topography. This dataset contains surface meteorology data collected by the NCAR/EOL Integrated Sounding System (ISS) during METCRAX. This data are available in daily netCDF files and have not been QC'd.