Credit - DOE/NV/03624—1517 2021 Environmental Report
Credit - DOE/NV/03624—1517 2021 Environmental Report



Introduction


This dataset contains pressure values and additional metadata of convective vortex events recorded from 2012 to 2019 at 64 distinct locations at the Nevada National Security Site. Sensors at each site ran quasi-continuously for several years. These vortices are identified by characteristic dips in pressure time series, which are typically less than 1% of the background value and roughly symmetric in time.

This dataset was collected using Hyperion infrasound microbarometers deployed at the Nevada National Security Site during the Source Physics Phase 1 and Dry Alluvium Geology campaigns. These instruments are designed to capture low frequency sound, but they also record other pressure phenomena such as the passage of convective vortices. The instruments recorded continuously over months to years at distinct sites in this region.

Reference
Berg, E.M., L.J. Utrecho, S. Krishnamoorthy, E.A. Silber, A. Sparks, and D.C. Bowman (2024) An accurate and Automated Convective Vortex Detection Method for Long-Duration Infrasound Microbarometer Data, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 41, 341-354. https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-23-0037.1

Accessing the data bundle

Documentation


The Data
There are two types of data files in the Data Derived collection. Files that of the form ‘summary_yyyy’ provide summary statistics for all detections that year (yyyy), including date, time, and location of dust devil detections, with background weather conditions and fit statistics. The files of the form ‘data_yyyy’ contain pressure-time series data for each dust devil detection for a given year, sampled at 10 Hz, and decimated to their nearest milliPascal value to reduce file size. Each dust devil detection is associated with a unique dust devil ID (ddID) in the summary file. The dust devil ID can be used to isolate a specific dust devil time series within the data file.

Citing datasets for publication
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Krishnamoorthy, S., Berg, E., Bowman, D., Urtecho, L., Silber, E., Gauvin, S. and Ward, J. (2025). Seven years of convective vortex recordings in the Mojave desert, NASA Planetary Data System, http://doi.org/10.17189/58e0-1450