A synoptic observational data set of Tropical Instability Wave (TIW) mixing events and associated heat and momentum fluxes as well as oceanic and atmospheric background parameters is provided. The data set focuses on the vertical distribution of upper-ocean turbulence during 12 elevated TIW events observed in tropical Atlantic at the equator at 23°W than occurred between 2014 and 2019. TIW events were selected based on a peak to peak meridional velocity magnitude criterium of larger than 0.4 m/s having time periods between 18 and 50 days and the availability of ocean turbulence data time series. A TIW composite of the 12 events was determined by scaling the time axis of northward and southward TIW phases of individual waves to the average wave period. The dataset includes time series (daily means) of turbulent dissipation rates (chi-pot measurements, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL097345), upper-ocean zonal and meridional currents from moored acoustic Doppler current profilers, upper-ocean temperature and salinity profile time series, 4-meter wind speeds and relative humidity, shortwave radiation, longwave radiation, sensible, latent and net surface heat fluxes from ePIRATA (https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0816.1). These parameters are available for the composite event as well as for each of the 12 individual TIW events. The data set is provided for evaluating vertical mixing schemes of Earth system models and general ocean circulation models.

TIW_composite is a composite Tropical Instability Wave event that was calculated from all individual Tropical Instability Waves (TIW_1 through TIW_12)