The Organization of Tropical Rainfall: Observed convective aggregation data across the Tropics

This dataset contains about 5 years of analysed observations regarding the degree of convective aggregation, or clumping, across the tropics - these are averaged onto a large-scale grid. There are also additional variables which represent environmental fields (e.g. sea surface temperature from satellite data, or humidity profiles averaged from reanalysis data) averaged onto the same large-scale grid. The main aggregation index is the Simple Convective Aggregation Index (SCAI) originally defined in Tobin et al. 2012, Journal of Climate. The data were created during the main years of CloudSat and Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite data so that they could be compared with vertical cloud profiles from this satellite data, and the results of this analysis appear in Stein et al. 2017, Journal of Climate.

Each file is one year of data (although the year may not be complete).

Each variable is an array: var(nlon, nlat, [nlev], ntime)

longitude, latitude, pressure, time are variables in each file

units are attributes of each variable (except non-dimensional ones)

missing_value is 3.0E20 and is an attribute of each variable

Time is in days since 19790101:00Z and is every 3hours at 00z, 03z, ...

The actual temporal frequency of the data is described for each variable below.

The data is for each 10deg X 10deg lat/lon box, 30S-30N (at outer edges of box domain), with each box defined by its centre coordinates and with boxes overlapping each other by 5deg in each direction.

In general, each variable is a spatial average over each box, with the value set to missing if more than 15% of the box is missing data.

Exceptions to this are given below.

The most important exception is for the brightness temperature data, used in aggregation statistics, which is filled in using neighborhood averaging if no more than 5% of the pixels are missing, but otherwise is considered to be all missing data. The percentage of missing pixels is recorded in 'bt_miss_frac'.

Date (Publication): 2018-02-09T09:19:04

Date (Creation): 2018-02-09T09:19:04

Citation identifier: https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/f3f8337c838c4602876d43f56d878515

Citation identifier: Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) / f3f8337c838c4602876d43f56d878515

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Unavailable	Holloway, Christopher	Unavailable	Author
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Custodian
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Owner
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor
Unavailable	Holloway, Christopher	Unavailable	Principal investigator
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	pointofContact
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Publisher

Maintenance and update frequency: Unknown

Update scope: Dataset

Keywords

convective aggregation
Tropics
SCAI

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

atmospheric conditions

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Access to these data is available to any registered CEDA user. Please Login or Register for a CEDA account to gain access.

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Under the following licence https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/licences/missing_licence.pdf, appropriate use of these data may fall under unstated use. This message is intended as guidance, always read the full licence. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.

Spatial representation type: Grid

Language: English

Topic category

Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere

Begin date: 2006-06-14T23:00:00

End date: 2011-04-17T22:59:59

Unique resource identifier: WGS 84

Distribution format

Name	Version
Data are netCDF formatted

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/f3f8337c838c4602876d43f56d878515	CEDA Data Catalogue Page

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://data.ceda.ac.uk/badc/deposited2017/tropical_rainfall/data/observations	DOWNLOAD

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Statement: The data were collected from various online data repositories and analysed at the University of Reading.

Metadata

File identifier: f3f8337c838c4602876d43f56d878515 XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Parent identifier: The Organization of Tropical Rainfall: MetUM model data and observed convective aggregation data for the Tropics
18c737a986094b1abd19cfebc9d0c374

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Date stamp: 2026-01-12T03:15:31

Metadata standard name: UK GEMINI

Metadata standard version: 2.3

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Point of contact

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