The paper, and the datafile (below) should be cited as follows Lorenz, R. D. and P. Lanagan, 2014. A Barometric Survey of Dust Devil Vortices on a Desert Playa, Boundary Layer Meteorology, submitted.
The following links Classified.txt are summary files of suspected dust devil
vortex passages identified by visual inspection of the pressure record. The site
locations are described in the paper, and summary statistics of the data are
presented.
P10B_3_1_classified.txt
P11_3_1_classified.txt
P28_3_1_classified.txt
The following links PXXX.zip are to zipped archives of raw pressure data
recorded by three Gulf Coast Data Concepts B1100 pressure loggers installed
in June/July 2012 at Eldorado Playa near Boulder City, Nevada. Details are
given in the paper above. Data are acquired at 2Hz. These datafiles are
suitable, e.g. for attempting automatic dust devil detection.
Note that the timestamps in the datafiles are Eastern, 3 hours ahead of local
time.
After the header, the datafile contains comma-delimited
columns of time (s) and Pressure in Pa, with temperature in Celsius*10
(i.e. 325 is 32.5 degC) in alternate rows.
P10B.zip
P11.zip
P28.zip
The following file
BoulderCity_CMP04_AprilOct2012.txt
is data from a nearby (~7km) meteorological station at Boulder City. This provides a useful context (winds, cloud, etc.) for the dust devil statistics
Journal of Meteorology, 2005 a short paper reviewing the NTSB air acccident database, noting over 100 aircraft incidents (several fatal) attributed to dust devils
Icarus, 2009 a short paper showing visual detections follow N~50/A where A is survey area, and that Gusev dust devils seen by the Spirit rover follow a -2 power law
Icarus, 2011 a critical review of dust devil diameters from optical surveys on Mars and Earth, noting the general inadequacy of data to discriminate between e.g. exponential and power law populations
Planetary and Space Science, 2012 paper noting that pressure drops attributed to dust devil vortices on Mars may follow a power law distribution, and that terrestrial data arent good enough to compare (yet)
Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data systems, 2012 description of new field data loggers used to study dust devils, with particular note of temperature compensation and power supply.
Planetary and Space Science, 2013 demonstration of the mapping of cycloidal dust devil migration paths to asymmetric and multi-dip pressure histories. Multiple dips do not require multiple cores!
Icarus, 2013 correlation of dust devil lifetime to diameter (T~d^0.66) can be used to relate snapshot orbital images to ground surveys, and to correct surveys for advection of devils into survey area. Also notes aspect ratio statistics and detection efficiency of imaging from orbit
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