Introduction

About the Cesar Database and KDC

The Cabauw Experimental Site for Atmospheric Research (CESAR) has been established in 2002. It is a consortium of presently eight institutes and universities located in the Netherlands. The goal of the consortium is to operate and maintain at the Cabauw site a unique observational facility with a comprehensive set of remote sensing and in-situ equipment to characterize the state of the atmosphere, its radiative properties and the interaction with the land surface. The principal use of the measurements is 1) to study physical and chemical processes, 2) climate monitoring and 3) to perform validation studies.

The CESAR consortium is now part of the Ruisdael project. A 10-year infrastructure project funded by NWO.

The CDS webportal and database were developed by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Instititute (KNMI) in cooperation with and feedback from the Cesar partners. The KNMI also hosted and maintained the webportal and database. The CDS datasets are now distributed via the KNMI DataCente (KDC).

The CESAR data

Atmospheric, hydrological and other observational data collected at the Cesar Observatory from routine operation, experiments and (intensive observation) campaigns are made available through the CESAR database portal. Also higher order products derived directly or indirectly from the observational data are disseminated through the CESAR database portal.

Data format and convention

All the data are stored in netCDF formatted files and comply with the CF-1.4 convention of higher. Information on the netCDF format and the CF convention can be obtained from the internet.

The dataset description documents (DDD) which give a detailed explanation of the equipment, data-acquisition, processing and quality control, are stored in pdf format. These DDD's can be downloaded from the "Links" page in the menu.

Downloading data products from KDC

The KDC has two main options for downloading the data: 1) interactively via the KDC portal, or 2) via an ftp download. The latter option is easily scripted and preferred for e.g. automated downloads. The KDC doesn't support the 'basket' order procedure which was the only supported method for downloading data from the CDS.

The directory structure on the KDC ftp-server is as follows: <KDC datasetname>/<dataset version>/<file version>/<yyyy>/<mm>/<dd>. In general <file version> will be equal to 'noversion'. The '/<yyyy>/<mm>/<dd>' subdirectory is derived form the first valid date/time record in the datafile.

In the future the contents may be viewed with the ADAGUC viewer connected to the KDC portal. However this option will not be available for all CDS datasets.



Cesar Database
Cesar Observatory
Ruisdael Observatory
KNMI DataCentre