Cloud and rain features observed from the RV MS Merian in the transition region between the trades and the inter-tropical convergence zone.

This work characterizes the clouds and the precipitation generated from trade wind cumuli in the transition region between the trade wind regime and the inter-tropical convergence zone in the northwest Atlantic ocean. A W-band radar and a micro rain radar (MRR_PRO) recorded vertical profiles of clouds and precipitation continuously from the research vessel (RV) Maria S. Merian during the EUREC4A campaign. The data collected have an unprecedented high vertical and temporal resolution of 7-10 m and 1-3 s, respectively, below 3000 m, to investigate in detail the structure of marine boundary layer clouds. Due to the ship's trajectory, which spanned between 6N and 13.8N and 51W to 60W for approximately 32 days, the data provide crucial information on how the daily cycle of cloud fraction, precipitation, and bulk cloud properties change with latitude. We investigated cloud base, cloud top distributions, and radar reflectivity as a function of height for different liquid water path regimes. Other Doppler radar moments provided insights into cloud-to-rain microphysics. The observed cloud and rain features emerging from the data are relevant for process studies, model evaluations, and comparison of satellite retrievals. Finally, by presenting this novel publicly available dataset, we aim at increasing the data visibility and facilitating data access, showing how to download the data and plot them online easily.