North American Monsoon GPS Transect Experiment 2013

Ten GPS-Met stations were installed in northwest Mexico from June - September 2013. Each station included a Trimble NetR9 GPS receiver for PWV and a Vaisala WXT520 surface meteorological package measuring wind speed and direction, air temperature, humidity, pressure and precipitation. The geographic location, elevation and data period for each station are provided in Serra et al. (2016). The GPS receiver at Rayon failed on July 16, 21 days after installation, thus these data are not included in the archive but are available upon request (yserra@uw.edu). Data include 1-min surface meteorological variables, while the GPS PWV is calculated at 5-min intervals. A full description of the experiment can be found in Serra et al., 2016: Bull. Am. Meteor. Soc., doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00250.1.

Northwest Mexico experiences large variations in water vapor on seasonal time scales in association with the North American monsoon (NAM), as well as during the monsoon associated with upper tropospheric troughs, mesoscale convective systems, tropical easterly waves and tropical cyclones. Together these events provide more than half of the annual rainfall to the region. A sufficient density of meteorological observations is required to properly observe, understand and forecast the important processes contributing to the development of organized convection over northwest Mexico. Stability of observations over long time periods is also of interest to monitor seasonal and longer timescale variability in the water cycle. For more than a decade the United States Global Positioning System (GPS) has been used to obtain tropospheric precipitable water vapor (PWV) for applications in the atmospheric sciences. There is particular interest in establishing these systems where conventional operational meteorological networks are not possible due to lack of financial or human resources to support the network. These data were collected as part of The North American Monsoon GPS Transect Experiment 2013 in northwest Mexico for the study of mesoscale processes and the impact of PWV observations on high-resolution model forecasts of organized convective events during the 2013 monsoon season. The collection of these data was funded by grants from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México's Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigación e Innovación Tecnológica (PAPIIT IA101913 and IA100916) and UNAM’s Programa de Investigación en Cambio Climático (PINCC), as well as a grant from the National Science Foundation (AGS-1261226).

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México's Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigación e Innovación Tecnológica (PAPIIT IA101913 and IA100916) and Programa de Investigación en Cambio Climático (PINCC) grants, as well as the National Science Foundation grant AGS-1261226.