Comments On The MPX Sounding

JimmyC writes: You got me. I am a sucker for these soundings. Profiles similar to this one were observed in BAMEX. Its likely that the layer just below 500 hPa is within an updraft. I wonder if the soundings are still being archived with native 6-sec resolution, which would contain the balloon ascent rate. This would be a robust way to filter out some of the sensor wetting errors. It is interesting that the layer of interest occurs near the melting layer as implied by the saturation with respect to ice above.
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Several things in response:

Bizarre profiles like this (see previous post) are, of course, observed with other type sondes, particularly in thunderstorm environments. I highlight the bad RRS soundings in this blog because serious problems are far more frequent with the new NWS sounding system.
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As I understand the data archiving situation, the full-resolution, 1-second data are archived at NCDC. If one has the RSS software, and purchases the sounding data (if you're not in NOAA) then fairly comprehensive diagnostics can be done to determine what probably happened during a flight, as per MPX this morning. Of course, only a limited number of people are able to do this kind of diagnostics - I certainly can't.
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The sounding appears to have an absolutely moist unstable layer beginning just below 850 mb (assuming that the data are good - since water may have already been inside the instrument). The parcels just below 500 mb appear to have same theta-E as the parcels just below 850 mb.
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The intense superadiabatic layers just below and just above 500 mb do not appear to be the typical result of wetbulbing - again, assuming that water in the instrument hasn't completely destroyed the humidity data.
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If someone who can access the raw data wants to jump in here with their diagnostics, please do.