Using IASOA Cloud Datasets

Ground based observations of Arctic clouds are some of the most valuable and rare datasets collected at Arctic observatories.  These observations are limited by cost, complexity and the energy and maintenance requirements of active sense.  Still the chart below shows that there are many excellent cloud observations available, particularly from the DOE-ARM site at Barrow, AK as well as the ICECAPS experiment from Summit, Greenland.  These datasets are extremely large and typically available only in netcdf format.  Some of the longest term records are derived from manual cloud observations taken by surface observers, for example, from Tiksi Russia.  Not all of these datasets have been ingested into the IASOA Data Access portal.  Visit Data->Data-at-a-Glance to learn more about Cloud Property datasets from IASOA observatories. 

Fig. 1 Cloud property datasets from IASOA observatories.