A high-resolution air-sea synoptic observation dataset from drifting buoys in the Bay of Bengal

Mass and heat exchanges at the air-sea interface fundamentally drive global weather and climate systems. However, acquiring long-term, high-frequency, synchronous in-situ observations of both atmospheric and oceanic variables remain highly challenging, especially during extreme weather. This paper presents a high-resolution dataset from five air-sea drifting buoys deployed in the Bay of Bengal (BoB) in 2020 and 2022. These buoys captured precise, synchronous measurements of key meteorological parameters (air temperature, sea-level pressure, wind speed and direction, and relative humidity) alongside sea surface temperature. The dataset is typically sampled hourly; however, the sampling was increased to 5 min intervals during tropical cyclones Nivar, Burevi, Four and Asani. This high-frequency dataset offers invaluable in-situ records for studying diurnal variations and fine-scale processes in the BoB. Furthermore, it provides critical observational data to advance our understanding of air-sea coupling, validate high-frequency satellite products, and improve parameterizations in regional numerical weather prediction models under extreme conditions. The dataset is freely available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21294873 (Huang et al., 2026).