Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project: Atmospheric data from the 2023 annular and 2024 total solar eclipses
Data files
Apr 11, 2025 version files 77.97 MB
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NEBP-AtSci-final_QC.zip
77.96 MB
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README.md
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Abstract
The Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) is a student-centered STEM education and research initiative that leveraged the October 14, 2023 annular eclipse and April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse for authentic learning opportunities. The NEBP consisted of 53 student-led teams, including 19 teams that focused on atmospheric science research. These Atmospheric Science student teams flew up to 30 radiosondes during the annular and total solar eclipses, reaching altitudes of 100,000 ft - 115,000 ft (30,000 m - 35,000 m). In addition, NEBP teams collected high-temporal resolution surface-site data. This design provided surface, lower, and middle atmospheric observations with enough spatial and temporal sampling to contrast the meteorological differences before, during, and after the eclipse. The surface stations provided independent measurements of solar irradiance at the surface. All flight phases were led by students, including radiosonde initialization, balloon fill, launch, real-time data quality checks, and preliminary data analysis in the field. This dataset is for the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse flights. Visit eclipse.montana.edu for more NEBP information.
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.v15dv426j
Description of the data and file structure
This Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) readme.txt file was generated on 2024-06-01 by Marissa Saad, PhD.
GENERAL INFORMATION
1. Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) Total Solar Eclipse Data Set (for all teams)
2. Author Information
A. Principal Investigator Contact Information
Angela Des Jardins, PhD
Montana State University
P.O. Box 173835, Bozeman, MT 59717
Angela.desjardins@montana.edu
B. Associate or Co-investigator Contact Information
Marissa Saad, PhD
Montana State University
P.O. Box 173835, Bozeman, MT 59717
marissa.saadmarch@montana.edu
3. Date of data collection: 2024-04-07 to 2023-04-08
4. Geographic location of data collection:
NEBP’s scientific ballooning sites along path of totality:
(NEBP teams with data: Connecticut_New Haven, University of Idaho, University of Kentucky (UK), Louisiana Delgado, Minnesota, Montana SKC, New Mexico 1, New Mexico 2, University of North Dakota (UND), Oklahoma Gordon Cooper Technical College (GCTC), Oklahoma State, University of Pennsylvania (UP), Washington, University of Wyoming (UW))
Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data:
NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Science Activation (SciAct) and NASA Office of STEM Engagement’s (OSTEM) Space Grant College and Fellowship Project
This is the quality-controlled (QC’ed) Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) radiosonde data that took place in 2023 annular eclipse and 2024 total solar eclipse. This folder is organized as follows:
2023_finalQC — all 2023 QC’ed radiosonde data in txt format, organized in folders from each pod (total 12 pods)
2024_finalQC — same with above, except includes 18 pods
Metadata_2023 — Gridded supersite data from 4 sites in New Mexico in 2023 campaign.
sample_metadata_loader.py — a sample python reader to load in the metadata
sample_v3_data_loader.py — a sample python reader to load in an individual radiosonde profile
The individual radiosonde filename follows the following convention:
STATE_PODNAME_YYMMDD_HHMM_Q3.txt
NOTE: These states and pod names are not the launch location for the radiosonde, but names of the participating team. Please refer to the first valid line of record for the latitude and longitude information of launch location.
The metadata file name follows the following convention:
VARNAME_timeseries_metadata.nc
The variable names and units should be self-explanatory in individual radiosonde files.
One can open the two python readers to understand better the variable name, meaning and unit.
Supersite consists of 4 pods: NewHampshire_PSU1, NewHampshire_PSU2, NewYork_SUNYAlbany, NewYork_SUNYOswego
In each campaign folder, there’s file called “Non-Reprocessed_Schools.docx”. This file contains the name list of pods which didn’t submit the raw BURF file, so we cannot reprocess the data and some columns of variables might be missing and we cannot back fill.
In each individual pod folder, there is a table called “filter_parameters.xlsx”, which contains the threshold values we used to filter out bad data. These thresholds are manually adjusted to keep as many good data as possible and kick out as many bad data as possible. Still, there could be occasional outliers that we didn’t remove completely in certain variables. One should use caution and the best practice we suggest is to plot out the profile to visually check before further data analysis.
Data QC work is mainly carried out by Hugh Riley Randall @ SUNY_Oswego (now at University of Rochester)
QC data scrutinization and iteration is mainly carried out by Caeley Hodges @ Univ. of Idaho and Jie Gong @ NASA Goddard
Data QC work is supported by the NASA Science Activation Program through funding the NEBP project, and by NASA Weather and Dynamics and NASA Decadal Survey Incubator programs. Caeley Hodges is also partially supported by the Space Grant of Idaho State.
Point of Contact for any questions or comments about this dataset should be directed to Dr. Jie Gong (Jie.Gong@nasa.gov) or Dr. Angela des Jardins (angela.desjardins@montana.edu) in the foreseeable future.
This dataset was collected on April 7-8, 2024 by Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project student teams, who collected atmospheric science data on high altitude balloon flights. These teams launched radiosondes, or small standardized commercial off-the-shelf payloads of less than 190 grams. These collected high-temporal resolution data up to 115,000 ft (~35,052 m) in altitude. Each NEBP atmospheric science team flew up to 30 radiosondes during the 2024 total solar eclipse.
Student teams worked alongside faculty mentors, NASA subject matter experts (SMEs), and STEM professionals. The student teams participated in one of nine regional pods where they benefited from having an atmospheric science pod leader who offered technical support. Students collected data using Lufft weather stations and used Grawmet software to receive signals from the radiosondes. The SMEs and their teams quality controlled the data, where they identified and corrected errors in data sets (i.e., aligning naming configurations and ensuring uniform time stamps).