THE NERC MST RADAR FACILITY AT ABERYSTWYTH

Access to quick-look plots

Quick-look plots of data from the NERC MST Radar Facility's instruments are generated automatically for each 24 hour period (from 00:00 - 23:59 UT). The colour scales have been chosen so that the plots do not lose too much detail when printed in black-and-white. The lengths of the time axes (in pixels) are the same for each plot type although the sizes of the left and right margins vary. Note that printing applications often auto-scale images to fit the paper width. This feature may result in the different plot types appearing to be of different sizes unless it is disenabled.

The plots are made available through the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) for reference purposes only. They MAY NOT be used for publications without prior permission. You do not need to have access to the data in order to view the plots through the following links. Click on the links on the left hand side in order to find out more about file naming and archiving conventions. Click on the archive location links on the right hand side in order to access the plots.

The latest plot of each type can be found here.

Plot type: MST Radar - ST mode - wind
Shows horizontal wind speed and direction, vertical velocity, (vertical beam) radar return signal power, tropopause altitude and sharpness. Data taken from the latest v3 Cartesian files.
File naming convention: radar-mst_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_stRRR_wind.png
Archive location: /badc/mst/plots/st-mode
Archiving convention: YYYY/MM


Plot type: MST Radar - ST mode - turbulence
Shows vertical shear of horizontal wind, beam-broadening-corrected (vertical beam) spectral width, aspect sensitivity, and tropopause altitude. Data taken from the latest v3 Cartesian files.
File naming convention: radar-mst_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_stRRR_turbulence.png
Archive location: /badc/mst/plots/st-mode
Archiving convention: YYYY/MM


Plot type: MST Radar - ST mode - diagnostics
Shows where a secondary radial chain exists (i.e. evidence of structure in "unwanted" signal components), the complementary-beam horizontal-velocity continuity factor, the theta_s compensation factor (which has been applied to the wind speed to compensate for the effects of aspect sensitivity), and the tropopause altitude. These plots are intended for diagnostics purposes only.
File naming convention: radar-mst_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_stRRR_diagnostics.png
Archive location: /badc/mst/plots/st-diagnostics
Archiving convention: YYYY/MM


Plot type: MST Radar - M mode
Shows the (vertical beam) radar return signal power. Data taken from the latest v3 Cartesian files.
File naming convention: radar-mst_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_mRRR.png
Archive location: /badc/mst/plots/m-mode
Archiving convention: YYYY/MM


Plot type: Surface met sensors - Campbell Scientific
Shows temperature, solar power density (note that the files store the integrated solar energy density over 10 minutes, not the power), relative humidity, rainfall rate (not that the files store rainfall accumulation, not rate), and pressure from the Campbell Scientific surface met data files.
File naming convention: nerc-mstrf-met-sensors_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_campbell-sci.png
Archive location: /badc/mst/plots/surface-met
Archiving convention: YYYY/MM


Plot type: Surface met sensors - Vaisala WXT510
Shows temperature, relative humidity, rainfall rate and pressure from the Vaisala WXT510 (ptu) surface met files.
File naming convention: nerc-mstrf-met-sensors_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_wxt510.png
Archive location: /badc/mst/plots/surface-met
Archiving convention: YYYY/MM


Plot type: Surface met sensors - Combined
Shows temperature, solar power density, relative humidity, rainfall rate, and pressure from both the Campbell Scientific and Vaisala WXT510 (ptu) surface met files.
File naming convention: nerc-mstrf-met-sensors_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_combined.png
Archive location: /badc/mst/plots/surface-met
Archiving convention: YYYY/MM


Plot type: Surface wind sensors - Frongoch
Shows wind speed and direction, and minimum and maximum gust speeds, from the Frongoch surface wind data files.
File naming convention: wind-sensors_frongoch_YYYYMMDD.png
Archive location: /badc/mst/plots/surface-wind
Archiving convention: YYYY/MM


Plot type: Vasiala LD40 Ceilometer - cloud base
Shows the altitude of up to three cloud layers taken from the Vaisala LD40 laser ceilometer cloud base data files.
File naming convention: lidar-ld40_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_cloud-base.png
Archive location: /badc/mst/plots/laser-ceilometer
Archiving convention: YYYY/MM


Plot type: Sky-camera
Shows the first sky-camera image from each hour.
File naming convention: sky-camera_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_hhmm.jpg
Archive location: /badc/mst/plots/sky-camera
Archiving convention: YYYY/MM/DD


Older quick-look plots
Older-style quick-look plots are available for some of the other instruments. However, the archives are incomplete and these plots will eventually be replaced. The plots are only sorted by year (not by instrument or by month):

/badc/mst/images/YYYY

They have names of the form:

prefixYYMMDD.gif

prefix is a lower-case, 2 or 3 character prefix (see below)
YY is the 2-digit year

All plots for a month can be viewed through the multiple plot option:

Parameter Single Multiple
MST radar horizontal winds vcYYMMDD.gif avcYYMM.html
MST radar vertical velocities vvYYMMDD.gif avvYYMM.html
MST radar signal power prYYMMDD.gif aprYYMM.html
Surface meteorological data sdYYMMDD.gif asdYYMM.html
Surface wind data swYYMMDD.gif aswYYMM.html

Internal Links:
Return to the top of the page
The latest quick-look images for each instrument
Access to the data
Details of the instruments
External Links:
Quick-look plots of the latest MST radar observations through the Met Office's CWINDE pages (requires a password)