Abstract
Abstract. To advance the understanding of the interplay among clouds, convection, and circulation, and its role in climate change, the Elucidating the role of clouds–circulation coupling in climate campaign (EUREC4A) and Atlantic Tradewind Ocean–Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC) collected measurements in the western tropical Atlantic during January 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 6–16∘ N, 51–60∘ W. From 8 January to 19 February, a total of 811 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 s (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/10.25326/137). The methods of data collection and post-processing for the radiosonde data set are described here.
Highlights
A number of scientific experiments have focused on the trade cumulus boundary layer over the tropical Atlantic Ocean
The Barbados Oceanographic Meteorological Experiment (BOMEX 1969; Kuettner and Holland, 1969), Atlantic Trade-Wind Experiment (ATEX 1969; Augstein et al, 1973), Atlantic Stratocumulus Transition Experiment (ASTEX 1992; Albrecht et al, 1995), and Rain in Shallow Cumulus Over the Ocean (RICO 2006; Rauber et al, 2007) experiment measured thermodynamic and wind profiles of the Atlantic trade regime. With these profiles as initial and environmental conditions, models of the cumulus clouds explain their interaction with the environment (e.g., Arakawa and Schubert, 1974; Albrecht et al, 1979; Krueger, 1988; Tiedtke, 1989; Albrecht, 1993; Bretherton, 1993; Xue et al, 2008; vanZanten et al, 2011)
The shallow trade-wind cumulus clouds over the tropical Atlantic Ocean are a focus of the Elucidating the role of clouds–circulation coupling in climate campaign (EUREC4A; Bony et al, 2017) and associated campaigns, such as the Atlantic Tradewind Ocean–Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC)1
Summary
A number of scientific experiments have focused on the trade cumulus boundary layer over the tropical Atlantic Ocean. Arrayed networks of soundings have been used to characterize the interaction of clouds, convection, and the synoptic environment In many examples, they have been used to diagnose tendencies of the heat, mass, and moisture budgets for the tropical atmosphere (e.g., Reed and Recker, 1971; Yanai et al, 1973; Nitta and Esbensen, 1974; Lin and Johnson, 1996; Mapes et al, 2003; Johnson and Ciesielski, 2013). They have been used to diagnose tendencies of the heat, mass, and moisture budgets for the tropical atmosphere (e.g., Reed and Recker, 1971; Yanai et al, 1973; Nitta and Esbensen, 1974; Lin and Johnson, 1996; Mapes et al, 2003; Johnson and Ciesielski, 2013) These experiments in the deep tropics monitored the synoptic (100–1000 km) variations of vertical motion and moisture convergence as context for the evolution of the ensemble of convective clouds observed within their sounding networks. Atalante launched a different type of sonde, which is described in the Appendix
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