HURRICANE AND SEVERE STORM SENTINEL (HS3) GLOBAL HAWK ADVANCED VERTICAL ATMOSPHERIC PROFILING SYSTEM (AVAPS) DROPSONDE SYSTEM V2

The Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) Global Hawk Advanced Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (AVAPS) Dropsonde System dataset was collected by the Advanced Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (AVAPS), built by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which served as the dropsonde system for the Global Hawk aircraft during the HS3 campaign. Goals for HS3 included: assessing the relative roles of large-scale environment and storm-scale internal processes; and addressing the controversial role of the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) in tropical storm formation and intensification as well as the role of deep convection in the inner-core region of storms. AVAPS dropsondes provide in-situ, high-vertical resolution measurements of atmospheric variables including pressure, temperature, humidity, geographic location, and winds, providing a vertical profile of the atmospheric conditions. The raw instrument measurement precision is as follows: pressure +-1.0 hPa, temperature +-0.2 degrees C, wind +-1 ms-1, and humidity +-7 percent. The measured information was transmitted via Iridium or Ku-Band satellite to the ground station where the Global Telecommunications System (GTS) performed additional processing for research and operational purposes.