The mesoscale convective system (MCS) database over contiguous United States (CONUS) is a long-term (2004-2017) high-resolution (4 km, 1 hourly) storm system data set that tracks individual MCS events. The MCS database is produced by applying an updated version of the FLEXible object TRaKeR (FLEXTRKR) (Feng et al. 2018) algorithm described in detail in Feng et al. (2019) to the NASA Global MergedIR infrared brightness temperature (Janowiak et al. 2001) and the GridRad mosaic 3D NEXRAD radar data set (Bowman and Homeyer 2017).
FLEXTRKR
flextrkr > Mesoscale convective system (MCS) database over United StatesData Source Type(s) > PI
Purpose
The purpose of the data set is to provide life cycle evolution of individual MCS events, along with a suite of important MCS characteristics including lifetime, precipitation feature characteristics, convective and stratiform separation, echo-top heights, propagation speeds, and more. The long-term high-resolution nature of the data set provides MCS climatology over all seasons covering large regions of the CONUS east of the Rocky Mountains, which can be used to understand relationships between atmospheric environments and MCS characteristics, impacts of MCS on hydroclimate, and severe weather events, as well as to evaluate and improve numerical weather prediction models and earth system models.
Primary Measurements
Locations
- Fixed
- Mobile
Data Details
| Developed By | Zhe Feng |
| Contact | Zhe Feng |
| Resource(s) |
Data Directory ReadMe |
| Data format | netcdf |
| Site | SGP |
| Content time range | 1 January 2004 - 31 December 2017 |
| Attribute accuracy | No formal attribute accuracy tests were conducted. |
| Positional accuracy | No formal positional accuracy tests were conducted. |
| Data Consistency and Completeness | Data set is considered complete for the information presented, as described in the abstract. Users are advised to read the rest of the metadata record carefully for additional details. |
| Access Restriction | No access constraints are associated with this data. |
| Use Restriction | No use constraints are associated with this data. |
| File naming convention | Statistics files are by season: robust_mcs_tracks_yyyymmdd_yyyymmdd.nc; Pixel-level files are by hour: mcstracking_yyyymmdd_hhmm.nc |
| Directory Organization | Statistics files: /stats_linkpf; Pixel-level files: /mcstracking_linkpf; Monthly mean files: /monthly_mean |
| Citations |
Feng, Z., Houze, R. A., Leung, L. R., Song, F., Hardin, J. C., Wang, J., et al. (2019). Spatiotemporal Characteristics and Large-scale Environments of Mesoscale Convective Systems East of the Rocky Mountains. Journal of Climate, 32(21), 7303-7328. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0137.1.
https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0137.1
Feng, Z., Leung, L. R., Houze, R. A., Hagos, S., Hardin, J., Yang, Q., et al. (2018). Structure and Evolution of Mesoscale Convective Systems: Sensitivity to Cloud Microphysics in Convection-Permitting Simulations Over the United States. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 10(7), 1470-1494. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018MS001305. |