Abstract:
Global Upper Air is a family of products and archived digital data sets at the National Climatic
Data Center (NCDC). All are meteorological upper air data. CARDS stands for Comprehensive Aerological Data Set.
The goal of the CARDS project has been to produce global upper air data sets based on daily (up to four per day)
radiosonde observations suitable for use in
... evaluating climate models and detecting tropospheric and stratospheric
climate change. A major task of the CARDS project, which began in 1991, has been to build observational databases
and make this data available to the research community and to NCDC customers. Data from over 27 sources has been
collected, converted to a like format, and processed through the Comprehensive Hydrostatic Quality Control (CHQC).
This data was then merged, based upon add/replace algorithms that took into consideration the number of mandatory
and significant pressure levels and the number of errors detected during the CHQC, selecting the best observations
from the available data sets. The data has then been further quality controlled via an advanced Complex Quality
Control (CQC) system. The CARDS database contains some 27 million observations beginning in 1948, comprising a data
set of approximately 64GB. A metadata record for each observation contains information related to the number of
levels in total and by type, as well as a summary of the observation. A full suite of inventories and reports is
available based upon the metadata. Building of future CARDS data sets will be based upon the detection and
identification or removal of systematic errors (biases). Also, CARDS will provide an in-depth upper air station
history for 2400+ stations. CARDS data includes the following purely meteorological parameters: clouds and obscuration,
pressure, geopotential height, temperature, relative humidity, dew point depression, and wind speed and direction.
CARDS data also includes a large number of technical specifications and quality control parameters. The following
is a partial list of upper air data sets archived in the CARDS format at NCDC. Data sets marked with an asterisk (*)
are quality controlled compilations of CARDS data as described above. Data sets marked with a dollar sign ($) are
actively offered as products to customers and have their own separate FGDC ID numbers and metadata records. Number
Name $ DSI-6301 US Rawinsonde (CARDS) (C00415)$ DSI-6302 NMC GTS Global Upper Air (CARDS) (C00416) DSI-6303 Global
Upper Air on Exabyte Tapes (CARDS) DSI-6304 Global Upper Air (CARDS) (core subset)DSI-6305 Global Upper Air CARDS
Station Sort (C00503)* DSI-6306 Global Upper Air CARDS Synoptic Sort DSI-6308 MIT Global Upper Air (CARDS) DSI-6309
NCAR-NMC Global Upper Air (CARDS) DSI-6310 Global Upper Air (from TDF-54) (CARDS) DSI-6311 Global Upper Air (from TDF-56)
(CARDS) DSI-6314 USSR GTS Global Upper Air (CARDS) DSI-6315 Peoples Republic of China Upper Air (CARDS) DSI-6316
Argentina Upper Air (CARDS) DSI-6318 Hong Kong Upper Air (CARDS) DSI-6319 Republic of Korea Upper Air (CARDS)
DSI-6320 Hungary Upper Air (CARDS) DSI-6321 Netherlands Upper Air (CARDS) DSI-6322 Australia GTS Upper Air
(CARDS) DSI-6323 Australia Upper Air Thermo/Winds Merged (CARDS) DSI-6324 Brazil Upper Air (CARDS) DSI-6325
USSR Upper Air (CARDS) DSI-6326 Global Upper Air (from TDF-5683) (CARDS) DSI-6355 Russian Ice Island Upper Air
(CARDS) DSI-6380 Global Aircraft Reports (CARDS)* = quality controlled compilation CARDS data set$ = data set also
offered as a customer product NMC = old National Meteorological Center, now National Centers for Environmental Prediction
(NCEP)GTS = Global Telecommunications SystemMIT = Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyNCAR = National Center for
Atmospheric Research TDF = Tape Deck Format USSR = old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics The data sets offered to
customers contain high quality data. Quality controlled compilation data sets contain the most reliable data from
other CARDS data sets. Many of the other CARDS data sets in this list have not been quality controlled by NCDC, and
should be regarded as questionable, of historical interest only.The names of the data sets indicate their source and
where observations were taken. For example, DSI-6324 is Brazilian data received from Brazil; DSI-6314 USSR GTS Global
Upper Air was received from the old USSR, who received it over GTS, and it is global data. NCDC maintains this data set
in archive but no longer updates nor actively distributes it. It has been superseded by the Integrated Global Radiosonde
Archive (IGRA) (C00616). 
