Ship- and island-based atmospheric soundings from the 2020 EUREC⁴A field campaign

Claudia Christine Stephan (1) , Sabrina Schnitt (2) , Hauke Schulz (1) , Hugo Bellenger (3) , Simon P. de Szoeke (4) , Claudia Acquistapace (2) , Katharina Baier (1) , Thibaut Dauhut (1) , Rémi Laxenaire (5) , Yanmichel Morfa-Avalos (1) , Renaud Person (6) , Estefanía Quiñones Meléndez (4) , Gholamhossein Bagheri (7) , Tobias Böck (2) , Alton Daley (8) , Johannes Güttler (9) , Kevin C. Helfer (10) , Sebastian A. Los (11) , Almuth Neuberger (1) , Johannes Röttenbacher (12) , Andreas Raeke (13) , Maximilian Ringel (1) , Markus Ritschel (1) , Pauline Sadoulet (14) , Imke Schirmacher (15) , M. Katharina Stolla (1) , Ethan Wright (5) , Benjamin Charpentier (16) , Alexis Doerenbecher (17) , Richard Wilson (18) , Friedhelm Jansen (1) , Stefan Kinne (1) , Gilles Reverdin (19) , Sabrina Speich (3) , Sandrine Bony (3) , Bjorn Stevens (1)

1 MPI-M - Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie
2 Institut für Geophysik und Meteorologie [Köln]
3 LMD - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539)
4 CEOAS - College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences [Corvallis]
5 COAPS - Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies
6 NEMO R&D - Nucleus for European Modeling of the Ocean
7 LFPN - Laboratory for Fluid Physics, Pattern Formation and Biocomplexity
8 CIMH - Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology
9 MPIDS - Max-Planck-Institut für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation
10 Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing [Delft]
11 EPS - Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences [Albuquerque]
12 LIM - Leipziger Institut für Meteorologie
13 DWD - Deutscher Wetterdienst [Offenbach]
14 DIRSE - Météo-France Direction Interrégionale Sud-Est
15 University of Hamburg
16 MeteoModem
17 CNRM - Centre national de recherches météorologiques
18 TROPO - LATMOS
19 PROTEO - Processus et interactions de fine échelle océanique

To advance the understanding of the interplay among clouds, convection, and circulation, and its role in climate change, the EUREC⁴A and ATOMIC field campaigns collected measurements in the western tropical Atlantic during Jan-uary and February 2020. Upper-air radiosondes were launched regularly (usually 4-hourly) from a network consisting of the Barbados Cloud Observatory (BCO) and four ships within 51–60 ◦W, 6–16 ◦N. From January 8 to February 19, a total of 812 radiosondes measured wind, temperature and relative humidity. In addition to the ascent, the descent was recorded for 82 % of the soundings. The soundings sampled changes in atmospheric pressure, winds, lifting condensation level, boundary layer depth, and vertical distribution of moisture associated with different ocean surface conditions, synoptic variability, and mesoscale convective organization. Raw (Level-0), quality-controlled 1-second (Level-1), and vertically gridded (Level-2) data in NetCDF format (Stephan et al., 2020) are available to the public at AERIS (https://doi.org/10.25326/62). The methods of data collection and post-processing for the radiosonde data set are described here.

Domains: Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics [physics.ao-ph]

Claudia Christine Stephan, Sabrina Schnitt, Hauke Schulz, Hugo Bellenger, Simon P. de Szoeke, et al.. Ship- and island-based atmospheric soundings from the 2020 EUREC⁴A field campaign. Earth System Science Data, 2021, 13 (2), pp.491-514. ⟨10.5194/essd-13-491-2021⟩. ⟨insu-02918594v2⟩