CORAL#
The high-power lidar CORAL (Cloud Observation with Radar And Lidar) was designed for high-resolution vertical profiling of water vapor mixing ratio, air temperature, and cloud and aerosol properties. The instrument was installed with the intent to investigate fast processes driving cloud formation and interactions among the moisture field, air temperature, aerosols, and cloud droplets in the tropics. CORAL has been in operation since May 2019.
Configurations#
The processing from Level 0 to Level 1 data results in two products: slow and fast. The data in the slow product is smoothed in time over the temperature smoothing window. The fast product is smoothed in time over the user-specified smoothing window for the rest of variables (default is 2 min for low resolution (LR) and 4 sec for high resolution (HR), the time interval of the Level 0 data). Therefore, each of the following configurations results in a slow (labeled with “t”) and a fast (labeled with “b”) product.
2 min timestep, 60 min temperature smoothing#
from 2019-01-21 until 2023-03-17
available as BCO.lidar_CORAL_LR_t_c1_v1 and BCO.lidar_CORAL_LR_b_c1_v1
4 sec timestep, 12 sec temperature smoothing#
from 2019-01-21 until 2023-03-17
not yet available on the catalog
4 sec timestep, 2 min temperature smoothing#
from 2019-01-21 until 2023-03-17
not yet available on the catalog
Current data availability#
The above datasets do not extend to today, and efforts to integrate all resolutions and smoothings for the whole timeline of the instrument’s operation are ongoing. As such, data from after the ORCESTRA campaign (2024-09-30) until today with low resolution, is processed daily and available as .zarr files in the catalog:
BCO.lidar_CORAL_lowres_rolling_v1.zarrBCO.lidar_CORAL_lowres_reanalysis_v1.zarr
where rolling uses calibrations from 3 days before the processed date, and reanalysis uses calibrations from 3 days before and after the processed date. Calibration constants are written to the catalog as well, as .zarr under BCO.lidar_CORAL_calib_v1.