Continuous snow temperature profiles from the Snow Ice Mass Balance Apparatus (SIMBA) (level 1 Raw), Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere and Surface for Hydrometeorology (SPLASH), November 2022-June 2023

Raw (Level 1) measurements from the Snow Ice Mass Balance Apparatus (SIMBA) deployed at the Avery Picnic site (~ 38°58.345' N, 106°59.811' W) during the Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere, and Surface for Hydrometeorology (SPLASH) campaign near Gothic, Colorado, from November 2021 through June 2023. The SIMBA, originally designed for observing the mass balance of sea ice, is comprised of a thermistor chain with 2 cm spacing (Jackson et al., 2013). This system was configured for terrestrial snowpack by the manufacturer, SAMS Enterprise, to the specifications for SPLASH. The chain was installed suspended from a tripod and fixed to a rigid plastic bar near in time to the onset of snowpack in November 2022. The lowest 10 cm of the chain were buried within the soil. The top of the chain reached approximately 180 cm above the soil surface and snow was permitted to accumulate around the chain throughout the winter of 2022-2023. In the files, negative values of the "height" vector are below the soil surface and positive levels are above, which may be either snow or air depending on the snow depth. The system also uses a low-power heating cycle to measure thermistor's temperature response time for aiding in determining material interfaces: see Jackson et al. (2013) for details. 

There are several cautions to be aware of when using these data. The data has been ingested into daily netCDF and metadata (in attributes) have been provided but no quality control has been carried out on this raw version of the data set. From 1 November through 22 December 2022, the sensor obtained profiles every 10 min after which corruption of the configuration file reverted the profiles to every 6 hours (0, 6, 12, and 18 UTC). After 1 January a problem in the firmware caused the system to lose connection to the time-synching GPS network and therefore the clock drifted from January through June 2023 (the maximum potential time stamping error is likely < 81 sec). Finally, from 23 March through 4 April 2023, the depth of the snow at the location of the sensor was deeper than 180 cm and thus measurements in the upper part of the snowpack were not observed then.

Jackson, K., J. Wilkinson, T. Maksym, D. Meldrum, J. Beckers, C. Haas, and D. Mackenzie (2013) A novel and low-cost sea ice mass balance buoy. Journal of Atmosphere and Oceanic Technology, 30(11), 2676-2688, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-13-00058.1.