JOANNE: Joint dropsonde Observations of the Atmosphere in tropical North atlaNtic meso-scale Environments

• Published in: Earth System Science Data
• Main Authors: G. George, B. Stevens, S. Bony, R. Pincus, C. Fairall, H. Schulz, T. Kölling, Q. T. Kalen, M. Klingebiel, H. Konow, A. Lundry, M. Prange, J. Radtke
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2021
• Subjects: Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Geology; QE1-996.5; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-5253-2021; https://doaj.org/article/1e0e53a4b4b64c0eac38ae179075cfa7

As part of the EUREC 4 A field campaign which took place over the tropical North Atlantic during January–February 2020, 1215 dropsondes from the HALO and WP-3D aircraft were deployed through 26 flights to characterize the thermodynamic and dynamic environment of clouds in the trade-wind regions. We present JOANNE (Joint dropsonde Observations of the Atmosphere in tropical North atlaNtic meso-scale Environments), the dataset that contains these dropsonde measurements and the products derived from them. Along with the raw measurement profiles and basic post-processing of pressure, temperature, relative humidity and horizontal winds, the dataset also includes a homogenized and gridded dataset with 10 m vertical spacing. The gridded data are used as a basis for deriving diagnostics of the area-averaged mesoscale circulation properties such as divergence, vorticity, vertical velocity and gradient terms, making use of sondes dropped at regular intervals along a circular flight path. A total of 85 such circles, ∼ 222 km in diameter, were flown during EUREC 4 A. We describe the sampling strategy for dropsonde measurements during EUREC 4 A, the quality control for the data, the methods of estimation of additional products from the measurements and the different post-processed levels of the dataset. The dataset is publicly available ( https://doi.org/10.25326/246 , George et al. , 2021 b ) as is the software used to create it ( https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4746312 , George , 2021 ).