VOCALS: Multi-Network Composite 5-mb Level Upper Air Data. Version 1.0

This data set is a composite of radiosondes collected from 5 sounding platforms during the Variability of the American MOnsoonS (VAMOS) Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Study (VOCALS) 2008 project with data collected from 30 September 2008 through 1 December 2008. This project was conducted off and along the coast of northern Chile, South America in the eastern Pacific Ocean. This composite contains a total of 678 high resolution soundings. The data includes 678 soundings with 91 soundings from the lower site at Paposo, Chile, 215 soundings from R/V Ron Brown, 47 dropsondes from the United Kingdom Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM) BAe-146 aircraft, 192 soundings from the GPS Advanced Upper_Air Sounding (GAUS) system located at Iquique, Chile, and 133 soundings from the R/V Jose Olaya GAUS system. Users are strongly encouraged to contact FAAM BAe for guidance on using their dropsonde data. Please contact Grant Allen at grant dot allen at manchester.ac.uk. This data set contains upper-air sounding data interpolated to a constant vertical resolution of 5 hPa in the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) Sounding Composite Format.