Intercomparisons, Error Assessments, and Technical Information on Historical Upper Air Measurements

Upper-air data form the backbone of weather analysis and reanalysis products, particularly in the pre-satellite era. However, they are particularly prone to errors and uncertainties, especially data from the early days of aerology. Information that allows us to better characterize the errors of radiosonde data is important. This paper reports on an attempt to collect data from historical upper-air intercomparisons and from historical error assessments reaching back to the 1930s. The digitized numerical data will be made available through Copernicus Climate Change Services; here we publish the full information that includes images, literature, and other metadata that may be relevant and can be used to inform homogenization approaches or reanalysis production. The data collection described in this paper is available on PANGAEA: https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.925860 (Imfeld et al., 2021).