Polarimetric backscatter sonde profiles - Macquarie Island 2017

They were flown with weather balloons using radiosondes (Vaisala RS92SGP-D) to provide temperature, pressure and humidity data as well as telemetry. The data are organised into folders for each flight, the name of which includes the UTC launch time.

Within each folder is a calibration file which provides corrections referred to below. All data are in ASCII text format, but the special sensors file is further encoded - a code snippet below indicates how this is decoded. The raw data are affected by a background signal (due to internal pickup on the circuit board) that is measured prior to each launch by covering the photodetectors with opaque black foam, and recording data for ca 15 min, while the polarsonde/radiosonde package is left outside to come to ambient temperature.