Introduction

As part of its core activity the BADC is responsible for the data management of projects that are undertaken by UWERN and UFAM researchers. UWERN is the Universities Weather Research Network and UFAM is the Universities Facility for Atmospheric Measurement.

There is significant cross-over between the two groups as UFAM was created as the result of a successful Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) / Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Joint Infrastructure Fund (JIF) bid by a consortium of six universities co-ordinated by Professor Keith Browning under the support of the UWERN. Many of the projects and NERC Thematic Programmes that come under the UWERN umbrella involve UFAM instruments.

The key data types created by UFAM projects are instrumental datasets. UFAM is a pool of instruments and facilities in the UK designed to make measurements of small and mesoscale features in the atmosphere, generating data for a range of different research projects. The BADC communicates primarily with the individual instrument scientists employed by UFAM to maintain and manage each instrument.

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UFAM Related Datasets at the BADC

The BADC currently holds data from the following projects and campaigns that have made use of UFAM instruments:

• Convective Storm Initiation Project (CSIP).
• Improved Air Quality Forecasting (Invest to Save Budget ISB52).
• The North Atlantic Marine Bounday Layer EXperiment (NAMBLEX).
• The Tropospheric ORganic CHemistry experiment (TORCH) - part of the Polluted Troposphere thematic program.
• The UFAM intercomparison experiment.
• The Cloud & Water Vapour Experiment.
• The Shoeburyness Field Trial.

Data from UFAM instruments is stored at the BADC in two ways:

• Where UFAM instruments have been used during intensive measurement campaigns the data is stored together with the rest of the data in the archive for that campaign, for example, data measured during NAMBLEX is kept in the NAMBLEX archive, data from the TORCH campaign can be found in the Polluted Troposphere archive, and data measured during CWAVE can be found in the CWAVE archive.
• UFAM instruments also collect data outside of these campaigns- either during smaller projects for example the intercomparison experiment and the Shoeburyness field trial, or as background measurements in between assignments. This data is kept in the UFAM archive.

These archives are, by their nature, inter-linked and the data will be archived in such a way that it is browsable via either the instrument or via a particular project title. This will establish a long-term data archive of data using consistent formats that will be a valuable asset to future researchers. Access to each archive must be applied for separately.

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Data Management

The BADC has produced a Data Management Plan for UFAM. These documents cover all the data-related issues relating to UFAM research and are a useful guide for data providers and instrument scientists. The Annex of the Data Management Plan holds the UFAM Data Protocol.

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File-naming, metadata and data formats

The BADC is encouraging all UFAM projects and campaigns to deliver data in either NetCDF (binary) or NASA Ames (ASCII) format. NetCDF data should conform to the Climate and Forecasts (CF) Metadata Convention. Information on the inclusion of metadata is also provided.

If you are a data provider please see the submission instructions. Advice on standardising filenames is provided on the file-naming convention page along with a list of common names used for instruments, locations etc. in filenames.

Many data files contain the variable time which can be expressed in several ways. Guidelines on the recommended format of the time-variable header lines, units and the data values in Nasa-Ames files are available and are based on the format used in NetCDF.

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Citation

Universities Weather Research Network (UWERN), Blyth, A.; Hopkins, J.; Collier, C.; Gallagher, M.; Heard, D.; Illingworth, A.; Jones, R.; Lewis, A.; Robins, A.; Vaughan, G.; Price, J.; Bandy, B.; Bozier, K.; Brooks, B.; Flynn, M.; Garcelon, S.; Hayden, P.; Ingham, T.; Nicol, J.; Norton, E.; Whalley, L.; Williams, P. Universities Facility for Atmospheric Measurement (UFAM), [Internet]. British Atmospheric Data Centre, 2006, Date of citation. Available from http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/ufam/

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Further information

Please see the UFAM website for more information.