the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 20 Nov 2025
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. 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 Geofisica (INMG) on Sal on the Cape Verde Islands, continued with ship-based observations aboard the R/V Meteor across the Atlantic, and concluded at the Barbados Cloud Observatory (BCO) in the eastern Caribbean. During the campaign, a total of 624 radiosondes were launched, capturing high-resolution profiles of temperature, humidity, pressure, and winds. This radiosonde dataset, encompassing 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 complete dataset is openly available at ipfs://bafybeid7cnw62zmzfgxcvc6q6fa267a7ivk2wcchbmkoyk4kdi5z2yj2w4.
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RC1: 'Comment on essd-2025-638', Anonymous Referee #1, 04 Jan 2026
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2025-638/essd-2025-638-RC1-supplement.pdfCitation: https://doi.org/
10.5194/essd-2025-638-RC1 -
RC2: 'Comment on essd-2025-638', Anonymous Referee #2, 12 Jan 2026
The data paper by Winkler et al. describes the radiosonde data set collected during the ORCESTRA field campaign, consisting of three different sounding operations.
The paper gives a good overview of the data collect and the processing steps between the raw data and the final data produces. The manuscript describes where the data can be accessed and their formats. The Level 0 data can be accessed directly, the higher level zarr data require more specialized knowledge.
The processing steps are clear and appropriate, and I expect that data quality is of good quality.
I recommend publication of this manuscript after minor revisions.
The processing uses the vapor pressure equation of IAPWS (Wagner and Pruss, 2002). For radiosonde data, the vapor pressure equation used by the manufacturer should also be used in subsequent calculations to avoid any discrepancies between the calibration of the sensor and the measurements. At warm temperatures, this issue is irrelevant; however, at cold temperatures near the tropopause, this issue may become quite significant.
Vaisala uses the equation by Hardy (1998) and Modem uses the equation by Sonntag (1994). Fortunately, the differences to the IAPWS formulation are small and reprocessing is not needed, but you should convince yourself of this difference and make a statement to that effect.
Likewise, the inverse vapor pressure equation (1) to calculate the dew point temperature is a reasonable inversion of the Hardy equation used by Vaisala. However, it is NOT a good inversion of any Magnus-type relation. You should clarify that this is a good approximation of the inversion of the equation by Hardy (1998). Can you also provide a reference for this equation.
Table 1 should include the exact radiosonde model and its weight, especially for the Modem sonde. Also include the software version for the MW41 and Eoscan software.
Figure 2 is oriented like a Hovmöller diagram. It would be easier to read if the stations were along the vertical axis and time increasing along the horizontal axis. It will use less space in the final paper.
Line 101: Why were the additional radiosonde handled differently, i.e., placed outside before being attached to the balloon inside? I assume the same launcher was used for all sondes.
Line 105: I assume you mean “telemetry link” instead of “connection”.
Line 113: Instead of “… drifted farther east of the Atlantic than in the west” write “drifted farther in the eastern than in the western the Atlantic”
Figure 4: Please make the left-hand Figure wider so that the biases can be read better. You can achieve this by moving the legends
Line 154: Instead of “Apart from six post-launch contact losses” better write “Apart from telemetry loss of six sondes”
Line 166: Only icing is a risk prevented by the heater. Saturation is an atmospheric state.
Line 173: This is a repeat from line 165.
Line 192: replace “deployed” with “opened”
Figure 7: The 90th percentile of the descent rate is close to zero for both Modem and Vaisala sondes. In additional there seems to be a kink in the mean descent rate for the Modem sondes at around 20 km. This is extremely unlikely a real behavior and more likely either a processing issue or potentially a GPS receiver issue. You should look into the fall rate of the sondes and understand what causes this odd distribution.
Line 195 and supplemental material. You discuss the supplemental Figures in the main text. Since there are only three of them and they contribute to the overall paper, I would suggest you include all in the main manuscript. In Figure S1 and Figure 8, panel c each, I would suggest changing the units to [%], which is more common and easier to read.
You use the RH units of % in equation (1), but not in equation (2).
Line 198: Change “profile” to “sounding”.
Line 199: Is the splitting into ascent and descent profile on geopotential altitude, or GPS altitude grid? There is a space missing after 10 m.
Line 225: This is confusing. Does the M20 sonde also carry a pressure sensor?
Table 2: What is meant by “minimal vendor processing”? I assume that the full vendor processing including smoothing, radiation correction, and time response correction for humidity has already been applied at that stage.
Table 2 and Line 243: In the normal Level 1 processing of Vaisala radiosondes, which XML tables did you use?
Line 229: Both Vaisala and Modem generate more file than just .cor or .mwx. These systems can generate additional ASCII text files as well as bufr or temp files, which are distributed to the GTS. Can you describe all files and whether bufr or temp files were distributed to the GTS. That information may be useful if any user would like to use these data to compare against reanalyses, which may use these data.
Line 265: Please provide the values for Tc and Pc.
Line 271: Masking relative humidities > 100% prior to any binning or averaging can lead to small negative biases.
Line 305: Please give the values for Rd and Cpd.
Line 315: Why do you exclude the soundings while the R/V Meteor is still in Mindelo? After the arrival at Barbados, you showed that there is very little difference between the ship borne and land-based soundings. In addition, it would be interesting to see a comparison between the Modem and Vaisala soundings at Cabo Verde similar as that you did in Barbados.
Line 326: For all sounding sites, how is the first line of the radiosonde profile handled? Is it a measurement from a nearby surface reference station, or the potentially biased radiosonde data, which is not yet properly ventilated? If an external surface station is used, then all profiles should have a surface value.
Similarly, a temporary setup of a system is often prone to small configuration errors. Did you compare the settings of the second sounding system on the ship with the permanently installed system? Are all heights correct, and are the launches detected properly without loss of data just after launch? You can verify this by comparing the raw and processed data in the mwx file.
Lines 357: Descending profiles are often not tracked to the surface, which makes it more difficult to get a good integrated water column. You could create Figure 10 using only ascent profiles. This would also reduce any hysteresis or other sensor issues that may exist on descent.
Line 362: “…reaching the lowest …”
Data availability: The Level 0 data can be accessed as described. The information provided is not sufficient to access the .zarr data. You should provide more information regarding the IPFS since access without does not seem to be possible. Some implicit python libraries are missing and better directions for installing an IFPS client would be useful. Access through the web page is possible.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-638-RC2
Data sets
RAPSODI Radiosonde Measurements during ORCESTRA (Level 2) Marius Winkler and Marius Rixen https://browser.orcestra-campaign.org/#/ds/ipfs://bafybeid7cnw62zmzfgxcvc6q6fa267a7ivk2wcchbmkoyk4kdi5z2yj2w4
RAPSODI Radiosonde Measurements during ORCESTRA (Level 1) (merged, padded to common vertical levels) Marius Winkler and Marius Rixen https://browser.orcestra-campaign.org/#/ds/ipfs://bafybeidol5jadpzb2ibssf2lbbgdhm2zgzeg2urdyefwsxx7eelmcuumn4
RAPSODI Oscillating Radiosonde Measurements during ORCESTRA (Level 1) Marius Winkler, Karl-Hermann Wieners, and Marius Rixen https://browser.orcestra-campaign.org/#/ds/ipfs://bafybeidtfcyurvbw5obbhl5zlyfaoamnlhu6rrxyrmg2r2wwwidxq32oeq
Model code and software
pySonde for ORCESTRA-RAPSODI Hauke Schulz, Marius Winkler, Katharina Stolla, and Marius Rixen https://github.com/mariuswinkler/Winkler_et_al_RAPSODI_PySonde_for_Data_Paper_2025
Interactive computing environment
Plotting scripts for RAPSODI paper Marius Winkler and Marius Rixen https://github.com/mariuswinkler/Winkler_et_al_RAPSODI_Data_Paper_2025
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