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:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/edit?mid=1BuGfiN64gvmXfv2A5JlMPqbE8xKkJg0&ll=31.13389101333322%2C-103.77364590617174&z=4

(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.