  This paper develops a novel method to detect cold pools from atmospheric
soundings over tropical oceans and applies it to sounding data from the EUREC4A
field campaign, which took place south and east of Barbados in January-February
2020. The proposed method exploits the fact that the air in a cold pool is
denser than the air above it. It leads us to define cold pool soundings as
those for which the mixed-layer height is smaller than 400 m. We first test
this criterion by verifying its consistency with surface temperature and
precipitation in a realistic high-resolution simulation over the western
tropical Atlantic. Applying it to EUREC4A data, we then identify 7% of EUREC4A
dropsondes and radiosondes as cold pool soundings. In two selected case
studies, we find that cold pools soundings coincide with mesoscale cloud arcs
and temperature drops in the surface time series. Statistics for the entire
campaign further characterize the signature of cold pools in temperature,
humidity and wind profiles. In the presence of wind shear, we show in
particular that the spreading of cold pools is favored downshear, suggesting
downward momentum transport by unsaturated downdrafts. These results support
the robustness of our simple method in different environmental conditions and
illustrate the new insights it offers for the characterization of cold pools
and their environment.
