DOI: 10.5061/dryad.v15dv426j
title: Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project: Atmospheric data from the 2023 annular and 2024 total solar eclipses

description: The Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) is a student-centered
 STEM education and research initiative that leveraged the October 14, 2023
 annular eclipse and April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse for authentic
 learning opportunities. The NEBP consisted of 53 student-led teams,
 including 19 teams that focused on atmospheric science research. These
 Atmospheric Science student teams flew up to 30 radiosondes during the
 annular and total solar eclipses, reaching altitudes of 100,000 ft -
 115,000 ft (30,000 m - 35,000 m). In addition, NEBP teams collected
 high-temporal resolution surface-site data. This design provided surface,
 lower, and middle atmospheric observations with enough spatial and
 temporal sampling to contrast the meteorological differences before,
 during, and after the eclipse. The surface stations provided independent
 measurements of solar irradiance at the surface. All flight phases were
 led by students, including radiosonde initialization, balloon fill,
 launch, real-time data quality checks, and preliminary data analysis in
 the field. This dataset is for the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse
 flights. Visit eclipse.montana.edu for more NEBP information. 
description: This dataset was collected on April 7-8, 2024 by Nationwide
 Eclipse Ballooning Project student teams, who collected atmospheric
 science data on <strong>high altitude balloon
 flights</strong>. These teams launched
 <strong>radiosondes</strong>, or small standardized commercial
 off-the-shelf payloads of less than 190 grams. These collected
 high-temporal resolution data up to 115,000 ft (~35,052 m) in altitude.
 Each NEBP atmospheric science team flew up to 30 radiosondes during the
 2024 total solar eclipse.  Student teams worked
 alongside faculty mentors, NASA subject matter experts (SMEs), and STEM
 professionals. The student teams participated in one of nine regional pods
 where they benefited from having an atmospheric science pod leader who
 offered technical support. Students collected data using Lufft weather
 stations and used Grawmet software to receive signals from the
 radiosondes. The SMEs and their teams quality controlled the data, where
 they identified and corrected errors in data sets (i.e., aligning naming
 configurations and ensuring uniform time stamps). 
description: # Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project: Atmospheric data from the 2023
 annular and 2024 total solar eclipses
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.v15dv426j](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.v15dv426j) ## Description of the data and file structure This Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) readme.txt file was generated on 2024-06-01 by Marissa Saad, PhD. GENERAL INFORMATION 1\. Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) Total Solar Eclipse Data Set (for all teams) 2\. Author Information ``` A. Principal Investigator Contact Information Angela Des Jardins, PhD Montana State University P.O. Box 173835, Bozeman, MT 59717 Angela.desjardins@montana.edu B. Associate or Co-investigator Contact Information Marissa Saad, PhD Montana State University P.O. Box 173835, Bozeman, MT 59717 marissa.saadmarch@montana.edu ``` 3\. Date of data collection: 2024-04-07 to 2023-04-08 4\. Geographic location of data collection: NEBP's scientific ballooning sites along path of totality: [https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/edit?mid=1BuGfiN64gvmXfv2A5JlMPqbE8xKkJg0&ll=31.13389101333322%2C-103.77364590617174&z=4](https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/edit?mid=1BuGfiN64gvmXfv2A5JlMPqbE8xKkJg0&ll=31.13389101333322%2C-103.77364590617174&z=4) (NEBP teams with data: Connecticut_New Haven, University of Idaho, University of Kentucky (UK), Louisiana Delgado, Minnesota, Montana SKC, New Mexico 1, New Mexico 2, University of North Dakota (UND), Oklahoma Gordon Cooper Technical College (GCTC), Oklahoma State, University of Pennsylvania (UP), Washington, University of Wyoming (UW)) Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Science Activation (SciAct) and NASA Office of STEM Engagement's (OSTEM) Space Grant College and Fellowship Project This is the quality-controlled (QC'ed) Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) radiosonde data that took place in 2023 annular eclipse and 2024 total solar eclipse. This folder is organized as follows: 2023_finalQC --- all 2023 QC'ed radiosonde data in txt format, organized in folders from each pod (total 12 pods) 2024_finalQC --- same with above, except includes 18 pods Metadata_2023 --- Gridded supersite data from 4 sites in New Mexico in 2023 campaign. sample_metadata_loader.py --- a sample python reader to load in the metadata sample_v3_data_loader.py --- a sample python reader to load in an individual radiosonde profile The individual radiosonde filename follows the following convention: STATE_PODNAME_YYMMDD_HHMM_Q3.txt NOTE: These states and pod names are not the launch location for the radiosonde, but names of the participating team. Please refer to the first valid line of record for the latitude and longitude information of launch location. The metadata file name follows the following convention: VARNAME_timeseries_metadata.nc The variable names and units should be self-explanatory in individual radiosonde files. One can open the two python readers to understand better the variable name, meaning and unit. Supersite consists of 4 pods: NewHampshire_PSU1, NewHampshire_PSU2, NewYork_SUNYAlbany, NewYork_SUNYOswego In each campaign folder, there's file called "Non-Reprocessed_Schools.docx". This file contains the name list of pods which didn't submit the raw BURF file, so we cannot reprocess the data and some columns of variables might be missing and we cannot back fill. In each individual pod folder, there is a table called "filter_parameters.xlsx", which contains the threshold values we used to filter out bad data. These thresholds are manually adjusted to keep as many good data as possible and kick out as many bad data as possible. Still, there could be occasional outliers that we didn't remove completely in certain variables. One should use caution and the best practice we suggest is to plot out the profile to visually check before further data analysis. Data QC work is mainly carried out by Hugh Riley Randall @ SUNY_Oswego (now at University of Rochester) QC data scrutinization and iteration is mainly carried out by Caeley Hodges @ Univ. of Idaho and Jie Gong @ NASA Goddard Data QC work is supported by the NASA Science Activation Program through funding the NEBP project, and by NASA Weather and Dynamics and NASA Decadal Survey Incubator programs. Caeley Hodges is also partially supported by the Space Grant of Idaho State. Point of Contact for any questions or comments about this dataset should be directed to Dr. Jie Gong ([Jie.Gong@nasa.gov](mailto:Jie.Gong@nasa.gov)) or Dr. Angela des Jardins ([angela.desjardins@montana.edu](mailto:angela.desjardins@montana.edu)) in the foreseeable future.