Atmoswiki

The NASA USIP project aims to develop a digital thermosonde instrument for measuring temperature differences between two platinum wire probes (2 um diameter) and relate that to the refractive index structure parameter Cn2.

readsounding.py is a pseudo-universal sounding reading module that reads in a sounding and returns a dictionary containing standard sounding data (p,t,z,spd,dir,u,v) as well as name information for the sounding. This module is part of ADPAA and is located in $ADPAA_DIR/srcpython_lib/. The returned dictionary contains the following data:

S['NAME']  : file title containing the year, month, day, hour, and type of sounding
S['TITLE'] : Plot title containing the location, year, month, day, and UTC hour of sounding
S['LABEL'] : Plot label containing the type, date, location, and hour of sounding
S['PRESS'] : pressure (in hPa)
S['ALT']   : altitude (in m)
S['TEMP']  : temperature (in degC)
S['DP']    : dew point temperature (in degC)
S['SPD']   : wind speed (in kts)
S['DIR']   : wind direction (in degrees)
S['U']     : zonal wind speed (in kts)
S['V']     : meridional wind speed (in kts)

If a GRAW RTS table is being read, it will also contain:

S['TIME']  : seconds from the start of the flight (seconds)
S['UTC']   : UTC seconds from midnight (seconds)

To import all functions from readsounding:

>>> from readsounding import *

To read in a sounding:

>>> a = readsounding('sounding file')

To read in sounding data from a sounding named MCR_8_Aug_1000a_1.txt:

>>> S = readsounding('MCR_8_Aug_1000a_1.txt')

To access the data in the returned dictionary:

>>> S['TEMP']
array([ 28. ,  27.5,  27.2, ..., -37.8, -37.5, -37.4])
>>> S['PRESS']
array([ 1012.5 ,  1010.5 ,  1007.09, ...,    11.56,    11.5 ,    11.45])

cn2.py is a program with characteristics of a module and an executable program.