Ceilometer Profiles and Derived Products, part of the collection "Meteorological and Aerosol Measurements near the Salton Sea, California".

Cite as:
Evan, Amato T.; Frouin, Robert; Kuwano, Alexandra; Wynn, Sophia (2024). Ceilometer Profiles and Derived Products, 2023. In Meteorological and Aerosol Measurements near the Salton Sea, California. UC San Diego Library Digital Collections. https://doi.org/10.6075/J0HX1CW0

Corresponding author:
Amato Evan, aevan@ucsd.edu

Methods:
Measurements were collected monthly from a Vaisala CL51 ceilometer located at a sub-sea level field site near the western shoreline of the Salton Sea, California (33.169011 N, -115.855960 E and -32 m AMSL) from January 2023 through December 2023. The CL51 has a nominal wavelength of 910 nm. Data logging and processing is handled by the Vaisala BL View software. Manuals for the instrument and software are found at https://docs.vaisala.com/. Daily data files are combined to create one file per month.

Description of contents:
Monthly netcdf data files are saved in a TAR-archived and compressed (.gz) file, with filename yyyymm.tgz. Within the archive a monthly L2 file contain the backscatter profiles, up to heights of 15,400 m AGL at a time resolution of 16 s. A Monthly L3 file contain derived products, including smoothed (in space and time) backscatter and extinction profiles up to heights of 4,500 m AGL, and cloud and boundary layer heights. L3 data are at a time resolution of 16 s. L3 boundary Layer heights are determined via merged gradient and profile fit methods.

Monthly L2 file variables:
'time'		[units: seconds since 1970-1-1]
'range'		[height above ground level, units: m]
'profile_data'	[backscatter profiles, units: 10^-9 m^-1 sr^-1]

Monthly L3 file variables:
'time'          	[units: seconds since 1970-1-1]
'range'         	[height above ground level, units: m]
'Bs_profile_data' 	[smooth backscatter profiles, units: 10^-9 m^-1 sr^-1]
'Ec_profile_data' 	[extinction profiles retrieved from L3 backscatter profiles, 
			 units: 10^2 km^-1]
'bl_height'		[boundary layer heights (up to three heights detected),
			 values of 0 indicate no layer height detected, units: m]
'cloud_data'		[cloud base heights (up to three heights detected),
			 values of 0 indicate no layer height detected, units: m]