Documentation of the ISFS 30 minute flux dataset for PCAPS
The ISFS 30 minute flux dataset for PCAPS contains sensible and latent heat fluxes, friction velocity, total radiation and surface heat flux, as measured by the 7 NCAR Integrated Surface Flux System (ISFS) stations during PCAPS.
Each file contains one month's data starting at the first of the month indicated in the file name
The missing data value is 1.0 x 1037, indicating data is not available at the corresponding time for the given variable. The first ISFS measurements were recorded on Nov 10, 2010. Therefore, values for all time-series variables will be filled with 1x1037 for the initial portion of pcaps30m_20101101.nc.
The variables in the NetCDF files are defined by one or more of the following dimensions:
Dimension name
size
description
time
1440 or 1448
number of 1/2 hour periods in the month
station
7
index for each of the 7 ISFS stations
The variables in the NetCDF files are:
Variable name
units
dimensions
description
base_time
seconds
none (scalar)
POSIX time, non-leap seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 00:00 UTC of 0:00 UTC of the first day of the month
time
seconds
time
middle of sampling period, in seconds since base_time.
total radiation, positive downward, from pyranometer and pyrgeometer measurements at 2 meters
Gsfc
W/m2
time,station
surface heat flux, positive is upward
Gsfc_aux
W/m2
time,station
surface heat flux at auxiliary soil measurement sites of stations 1, 5 and 6
latitude
degrees-north
station
longitude
degrees-east
station
altitude
m
station
Approximate station altitude, above sea level
sonicHeight
m
station
Approximate height above ground of sonic anemometer and fast hygrometer eddy correlation measurements
* By convention, NetCDF variable names are limited to A-Z, a-z, 0-9 and underscore characters. The usual name for the friction velocity is "u*", which is converted to "u_" as a NetCDF variable. See the "short_name" attribute for each variable, which does not have a restricted character set.
