BEACH: Barbados and Eastern Atlantic Combined High-altitude dropsonde datasets

Abstract

As part of the ORCESTRA field campaign in August and September 2024, 1191 dropsondes were deployed over the Eastern and Western Atlantic ITCZ from the HALO aircraft coordinated by the PERCUSION and MAESTRO subcampaigns. Here, we describe the hierarchy and processing of the resulting Barbados and Eastern Atlantic Combined High-altitude (BEACH) dropsonde datasets. The Level 0 dataset contains measured meteorological variables, such as relative humidity (RH), temperature (T), pressure (p), eastward (u), and northward (v) wind data as output by the AVAPS system. The corresponding ASPEN quality-controlled data is called Level 1. Level 2 adds further measurement-specific quality control flags. Level 3 builds the core of BEACH including all quality controlled dropsonde profiles interpolated to a common 10 m altitude grid and concatenated into a single dataset. We further derive mesoscale vorticity, divergence, and vertical velocities from 87 circular flight patterns in Level 4 using the regression method. These area-averaged variables will guide our understanding of mesoscale processes acting within the ITCZ, one of the main goals of ORCESTRA. All data levels are openly available on IPFS, while the processing code is made public on GitHub.