The EUREC⁴A turbulence dataset derived from the SAFIRE ATR 42 aircraft

Abstract

During the EUREC4A field experiment that took place over the tropical Atlantic Ocean east of Barbados, the French ATR 42 environment research aircraft of SAFIRE aimed to characterize the shallow cloud properties near cloud base and the turbulent structure of the subcloud layer. For this purpose, the aircraft payload included radar and lidar remote sensing, microphysical probes, a laser spectrometer, and meteorological sensors. In particular, the aircraft was equipped with a five-hole radome nose as well as several temperature and moisture sensors allowing for measurements of wind, temperature and humidity at 25 Hz. This paper presents the high-frequency measurements made with these sensors and their translation in terms of turbulent fluctuations, turbulent moments and characteristic length scales of turbulence. A particular focus is on the calibration and the quality control of the air moisture measurements, which remain a challenge at fine scales. Level-2 and Level-3 data are distributed as an ensemble of NetCDF files available to the public at AERIS (https://doi.org/10.25326/128, Lothon and Brilouet, 2020).