RAPSODI: radiosonde atmospheric profiles from ship and island platforms during ORCESTRA, collected to Decipher the ITCZ

Abstract. The RAPSODI (Radiosonde Atmospheric Profiles from Ship and island platforms during ORCESTRA, collected to Decipher the ITCZ) radiosonde dataset was collected during the ORCESTRA field campaign in August and September 2024. It is designed to investigate the mechanisms linking mesoscale tropical convection to tropical waves and to air-sea heat and moisture exchanges that regulate convection and tropical cyclone formation. The campaign began at the Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia e Geofísica (INMG) on Sal in the Cape Verde Islands, continued with ship-based observations aboard the German research vessel R/V Meteor during an Atlantic transect, and concluded at the Barbados Cloud Observatory (BCO) in the eastern Caribbean. Over the 52 d campaign, a total of 624 radiosondes were launched at high temporal frequency (typically every three hours), capturing high-resolution vertical profiles of temperature, humidity, pressure, and winds from three complementary platforms. The dataset encompasses raw, quality-controlled, and vertically gridded data, is detailed in this paper and offers a valuable resource for investigating the atmospheric structure and processes shaping tropical convection and the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). The datasets generated in this study include raw radiosonde measurements (Level 0), oscillating and merged radiosonde profiles (Level 1), and vertically gridded profiles (Level 2), which are publicly available via the ORCESTRA data portal and DOI-referenced archives (Winkler et al., 2025a; https://ipfs.io/ipns/latest.orcestra-campaign.org/raw/BCO/radiosondes/, Winkler et al., 2025b; https://ipfs.io/ipns/latest.orcestra-campaign.org/raw/INMG/radiosondes/, Winkler et al., 2025c; https://ipfs.io/ipns/latest.orcestra-campaign.org/raw/METEOR/radiosondes/, Winkler et al., 2025d; https://doi.org/10.82246/BAFYBEIHXRAJOJUQZYX65QSO7AMA6NGVREETKDW3HQZX3SDZFB7LCMG6VAQ, Winkler et al., 2026; https://doi.org/10.82246/BAFYBEIA34AUWYVBH2RQ7CN7AGUZZ7PULQ2KRDDDIEESM6KPYSI, Winkler and Rixen, 2026a; https://doi.org/10.82246/BAFYBEID7CNW62ZMZFGXCVC6Q6FA267A7IVK2W, Winkler and Rixen, 2026b).

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Journal
Earth system science data
Published
2026-03-11
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-1833-2026
Primary Topic
Tropical and Extratropical Cyclones Research
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article
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article

RAPSODI: radiosonde atmospheric profiles from ship and island platforms during ORCESTRA, collected to Decipher the ITCZ

Geet George, Giovanni Biagioli, Daniel Klocke, Julie Capo et al.
Earth system science data
Tropical and Extratropical Cyclones Research
article

RAPSODI: radiosonde atmospheric profiles from ship and island platforms during ORCESTRA, collected to Decipher the ITCZ

Geet George, Giovanni Biagioli, Daniel Klocke, Julie Capo, Allison A. Wing, Ester Brito, Clarisse Dufaux, Vincent Douet, Paula Romero Jure, Adrien Coly, James H. Ruppert, Florence Favot, Nicolas Rochetin, Jean‐Louis Dufresne, Brett McKim, Tsung-Yung Lee, Connor Stoll, Emilie Fons, Basile Poujol, Chaehyeon Chelsea Nam, Emily Luschen, Lennéa Hayo, Marius Winkler, Daniel B. Rowe, Louis Netz, Michael Kopelman, Helene M. Gloeckner, Ezri Alkilani-Brown, Sarah Kennison, Delián Colón-Burgos, Jose Carlos da Luz, Laurent Gouttesoulard, Diouf Ousseynou, Nina Robbins-Blanch, Macintyre Syrett, Niwde Rivera Maldonado, Martin Stelzner, Vincent Ducastin, Jairo Segura Bermudez, Suelly Gonçalves, Mateo Lovato, Emma Chauvin, Philippe Peyrillé, Marius Rixen, Jarrett C. Starr, Fleur Couvreux, Thomas Fiolleau, Enora Le Gall, Zekican Demiralay, Chavez Pope, Michael M. Bell, Hauke Schmidt, Florent Beucher, Colin Welty, Sandrine Bony, Wei-Ting Hsiao, Jeremie Trules, Karl-Hermann Wieners, Akeem Dawes, Raphaela Vogel, Nicolas Maury, Karsten Peters-von Gehlen, Bjorn Stevens, Abraham Tekoe, Hans Segura
article en

Abstract

Abstract. The RAPSODI (Radiosonde Atmospheric Profiles from Ship and island platforms during ORCESTRA, collected to Decipher the ITCZ) radiosonde dataset was collected during the ORCESTRA field campaign in August and September 2024. It is designed to investigate the mechanisms linking mesoscale tropical convection to tropical waves and to air-sea heat and moisture exchanges that regulate convection and tropical cyclone formation. The campaign began at the Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia e Geofísica (INMG) on Sal in the Cape Verde Islands, continued with ship-based observations aboard the German research vessel R/V Meteor during an Atlantic transect, and concluded at the Barbados Cloud Observatory (BCO) in the eastern Caribbean. Over the 52 d campaign, a total of 624 radiosondes were launched at high temporal frequency (typically every three hours), capturing high-resolution vertical profiles of temperature, humidity, pressure, and winds from three complementary platforms. The dataset encompasses raw, quality-controlled, and vertically gridded data, is detailed in this paper and offers a valuable resource for investigating the atmospheric structure and processes shaping tropical convection and the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). The datasets generated in this study include raw radiosonde measurements (Level 0), oscillating and merged radiosonde profiles (Level 1), and vertically gridded profiles (Level 2), which are publicly available via the ORCESTRA data portal and DOI-referenced archives (Winkler et al., 2025a; https://ipfs.io/ipns/latest.orcestra-campaign.org/raw/BCO/radiosondes/, Winkler et al., 2025b; https://ipfs.io/ipns/latest.orcestra-campaign.org/raw/INMG/radiosondes/, Winkler et al., 2025c; https://ipfs.io/ipns/latest.orcestra-campaign.org/raw/METEOR/radiosondes/, Winkler et al., 2025d; https://doi.org/10.82246/BAFYBEIHXRAJOJUQZYX65QSO7AMA6NGVREETKDW3HQZX3SDZFB7LCMG6VAQ, Winkler et al., 2026; https://doi.org/10.82246/BAFYBEIA34AUWYVBH2RQ7CN7AGUZZ7PULQ2KRDDDIEESM6KPYSI, Winkler and Rixen, 2026a; https://doi.org/10.82246/BAFYBEID7CNW62ZMZFGXCVC6Q6FA267A7IVK2W, Winkler and Rixen, 2026b).

Earth system science dataVol. 18(3)
Florida State University (US), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), University of Leeds (GB), Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (FR), Universität Hamburg (DE), Deutscher Wetterdienst (DE), École Normale Supérieure - PSL (FR), Sorbonne Université (FR), Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (FR), Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques (FR), Laboratoire d’Études en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales (FR), Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (FR), Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (BB), Agence Nationale de l'Aviation Civile et de la Météorologie (SN), National Institute of Meteorology (TN), Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (DE), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (FR), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE), University of Oklahoma (US), Colorado State University (US), Delft University of Technology (NL)
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