atc2met Data Publication Web Site

What is atc2met?

atc2met, short for Air-Traffic-Control radio-communication to METeorological data, is a comprehensive system for observation, data processing, and data publication of meteorological data deribed from the radio communication for air-traffic control based on the Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) Mode-S.

Current status of atc2met system

atc2met is still at development stage.
Published data are for preliminary usage.

Provided data products

Measurement Techniques

atc2met receives SSR Mode-S signals from commercial aircrafts and compute meteorological information measured by these aircrafts. Data product of atc2met contains:

Air temperature,
Wind speed/direction,

Observable heights are roughly 0 - 12 km.

TBD: more info about measurement technique...

Version v1

Data are in NetCDF CF format. Example data structure is as follows.

    $ ncdump -h 20231020_10000000bde2ca07.nc
    netcdf 20231020_10000000bde2ca07 {
    dimensions:
            height = 49 ;
            time = 480 ;
    variables:
            double height(height) ;
                    height:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    height:units = "m" ;
                    height:positive = "up" ;
            int64 time(time) ;
                    time:units = "minutes since 2023-10-20 00:00:00" ;
                    time:calendar = "proleptic_gregorian" ;
            double U_5%(height, time) ;
                    U_5%:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    U_5%:units = "m/s" ;
                    U_5%:long_name = "5% point of zonal wind" ;
            double U_25%(height, time) ;
                    U_25%:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    U_25%:units = "m/s" ;
                    U_25%:long_name = "25% point of zonal wind" ;
            double U(height, time) ;
                    U:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    U:units = "m/s" ;
                    U:long_name = "zonal wind" ;
            double U_75%(height, time) ;
                    U_75%:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    U_75%:units = "m/s" ;
                    U_75%:long_name = "75% point of zonal wind" ;
            double U_95%(height, time) ;
                    U_95%:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    U_95%:units = "m/s" ;
                    U_95%:long_name = "95% point of zonal wind" ;
            double V_5%(height, time) ;
                    V_5%:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    V_5%:units = "m/s" ;
                    V_5%:long_name = "5% point of meridional wind" ;
            double V_25%(height, time) ;
                    V_25%:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    V_25%:units = "m/s" ;
                    V_25%:long_name = "25% point of meridional wind" ;
            double V(height, time) ;
                    V:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    V:units = "m/s" ;
                    V:long_name = "meridional wind" ;
            double V_75%(height, time) ;
                    V_75%:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    V_75%:units = "m/s" ;
                    V_75%:long_name = "75% point of meridional wind" ;
            double V_95%(height, time) ;
                    V_95%:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    V_95%:units = "m/s" ;
                    V_95%:long_name = "95% point of meridional wind" ;
            double T_5%(height, time) ;
                    T_5%:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    T_5%:units = "degree_Celsius" ;
                    T_5%:long_name = "5% point of temperature" ;
            double T_25%(height, time) ;
                    T_25%:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    T_25%:units = "degree_Celsius" ;
                    T_25%:long_name = "25% point of temperature" ;
            double T(height, time) ;
                    T:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    T:units = "degree_Celsius" ;
                    T:long_name = "temperature" ;
            double T_75%(height, time) ;
                    T_75%:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    T_75%:units = "degree_Celsius" ;
                    T_75%:long_name = "75% point of temperature" ;
            double T_95%(height, time) ;
                    T_95%:_FillValue = NaN ;
                    T_95%:units = "degree_Celsius" ;
                    T_95%:long_name = "95% point of temperature" ;

    // global attributes:
                    :tres_min = 3LL ;
                    :hres_km = 0.25 ;
                    :hmax_km = 12. ;
                    :roll_max_deg = 30. ;
                    :date = "2023-10-20" ;
                    :site_id = "10000000bde2ca07" ;
                    :site_name = "ARX01-00" ;
                    :latitude = 35.3201499835854 ;
                    :longitude = 139.649933649845 ;
                    :radius_km = 100LL ;
                    :product_version = "v1" ;
                    :software_version = "0.4.1" ;
                    :created_at = "2023-10-21T01:57:32.555733" ;

Quality Control

Data product ver. v1 takes the following simple quality control procedure:

Filter aircrafts with a large roll angle,
Filter data within specified radius from the site,
Compute representative values within each bin.

First, data taken by aircrafts with large roll angle ( > 30 degrees) are discarded because these data tends to become outliers. Then, data taken within a distance of 100 km from the site is selected. Finally, data are grouped into 0.25 km × 3 minutes bins, and the representative value is computed for each bin by taking the median of all values in that bin.

TBD: more info about data format...

Sites

Site locations

There are currently four sites in Japan, and 3 sites in Indonesia.

Japan

NIPR, Tokyo
JAMSTEC, Kanagawa
Shigaraki MU observatory, Shiga
Ryukyu University, Okinawa

Indonesia

Jakarta
Denpasar
Balikpapan

Instrument

atc2met receiver is composed of a single-board computer (Raspberry Pi 4) and USB DVB-T dongle. RTL-SDR is used to control the DVB-T receiver.

TBD: more info about hardware/software...

Credits

atc2met project is carried out by:

MORI, Shuichi from Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC),
HASHIMOTO, Taishi from National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), and
MUSHIAKE, Kazuhiko from Ilohas Project Co., Ltd.

In collaboration with:

KOGA, Tadashi and YOSHIHARA, Takayuki from Electronic Navigation Research Institute (ENRI)

The project is supported by:

JSPS KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory) (Grant Number JP20K21852),
Sumitomo Foundation Fiscal 2022 Grant For Environmental Research Projects (Grant Number 2230208), and
Strategic Research Projects grant from ROIS (Research Organization of Information and Systems) (Project Number 2022-SRP-05).

Contact

If you want to use data provided here, please let me know so that I can provide more information about the data product.

橋本大志 (Taishi Hashimoto)

National Institute of Polar Research

hashimoto.taishi[at]nipr.ac.jp (replace [at] to @)

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