THE NERC MST RADAR FACILITY AT ABERYSTWYTH
The recommended naming convention for files stored by the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) is:
- instrument is the name of the instrument
- location is the name of the place where the observations were made (not of the organisation which made the observations)
- YYYYMMDD is a string of 8 (numerical) characters representing the date (year-month-day) on which the observations were made
- [hh][mm][ss] up to three more strings of 2 (numerical) characters each can optionally be used to represent a time time of day (hours-minutes-seconds)
- extra is an optional string of characters representing additional information about the data stored in the file, e.g. range resolution
- ext is the file name extension, which is typically nc to represent a netCDF file or na to represent a NasaAmes file
- location is the name of the place where the observations were made (not of the organisation which made the observations)
Although this convention has been followed by all NERC MST Radar Facility files created in the past few years, the BADC have slightly modified their recommendation for the details included in the instrument field. This should now begin with the institute name - which is nerc-mstrf in the case of the NERC MST Radar Facility - in order to be able to differentiate between files of a similar type which are created by different groups as part of a field campaign. A list of accepted instrument and location names can be found here.
A some point in the near future (probably after October 2008), we will switch over to using the enhanced instrument names for all new files. The pre-existing files will retain their older-format names for the time being - although they too will eventually be converted. A list of old and probable new file names is given below.
Please inform the facility as soon as possible if this slight change in file names will cause you any disruption, e.g. because you have a script to automatically download or process files. We will, to some extent, be able to delay the date of witching. We will, of course, give further warning to all users when the change is imminent.
Click on the one of the links below to find out more about the file type and contents.
The text in green (second line) gives the pre-existing file naming convention.
The text in red (third line) gives the proposed new file naming convention.
Proposed file naming conventions which are preceded by a * may be further modified to meet the BADC's recommendation that there is at most a single extra field in the file name. This may contain several components, each of which is separated by a minus (-) sign but not by an underscore (_).
| MST Radar Cartesian
data radar-mst_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_altitude-mode_cartesian_v3.nc * nerc-mstrf-radar-mst_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_altitude-mode_cartesian_v3.nc |
| MST Radar radial data radar-mst_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_altitude-mode_radial_v3.nc * nerc-mstrf-radar-mst_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_altitude-mode_radial_v3.nc |
| MST Radar
spectral data - tar files radar-mst_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_hhmm_spectra.tar * nerc-mstrf-radar-mst_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_hhmm.tar |
| MST Radar
spectral data - individual files radar-mst_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDDhhmmss_YYYYMMDDhhmmss_spectra.nc * nerc-mstrf-radar-mst_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDDhhmmss_YYYYMMDDhhmmss_spectra.nc |
|
Campbell-Scientific surface meteorological data met-sensors_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD.na nerc-mstrf-met-sensors_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_campbell-sci.na |
|
Campbell-Scientific surface wind data wind-sensors_frongoch_YYYYMMDD.na nerc-mstrf-wind-sensors_frongoch_YYYYMMDD_campbell-sci.na |
|
Vaisala WXT510 surface meteorological ptu data no pre-existing file names nerc-mstrf-met-sensors_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_wxt510-ptu.nc |
|
Vaisala WXT510 surface meteorological ptu data no pre-existing file names nerc-mstrf-met-sensors_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_wxt510-precip.nc |
|
Vaisala WXT510 surface wind data no pre-existing file names nerc-mstrf-wind-sensors_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_wxt510.nc |
|
Vaisala LD40 Ceilometer cloud base data lidar-ld40_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_cloud-base.na nerc-mstrf-lidar-ld40_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_cloud-base.na |
| Sky-camera images -
tar files sky-camera_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_hhmm.tar * nerc-mstrf-sky-camera_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_hhmm.tar |
| Sky-camera images -
individual files sky-camera_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_hhmm.jpg * nerc-mstrf-sky-camera_capel-dewi_YYYYMMDD_hhmm.jpg |