Reproducible African Easterly Wave tracking and diagnostics using QTrack and ERA5
# QTrack African Easterly Wave Reproducibility
**An end-to-end reproducible implementation of African Easterly Wave (AEW) tracking using QTrack v0.0.4 and the official `era5_2010_10day` ERA5 example.**
> **Reproduction status: PASS ✅**
> Official ERA5 example downloaded and processed successfully in GitHub Actions on 27 August 2026.
> Successful run:
github.com
## Verified experiment
| Component | Configuration |
|---|---|
| Tracker | QTrack v0.0.4 |
| Example | `era5_2010_10day` |
| Input | ERA5 700-hPa zonal and meridional winds |
| Sampling | 6-hourly |
| Grid | 1° × 1° |
| Curvature-vorticity averaging radius | 600 km |
| Runtime | Ubuntu 24.04, Python 3.11 |
| NumPy | 1.26.4 |
| Status | Successful end-to-end run |
## Results
**Six AEW systems were returned by the official short ERA5 experiment.** All six showed net westward displacement.
| AEW | Duration (days) | Start lon | End lon | Westward displacement | Distance | Mean speed | Max strength |
|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| 1 | 6.50 | 32.9°W | 58.8°W | 25.9° | 3,053 km | 5.44 m s⁻¹ | 1.59×10⁻⁵ s⁻¹ |
| 2 | **8.75** | **4.6°E** | **45.3°W** | **49.9°** | **5,387 km** | 7.13 m s⁻¹ | 1.94×10⁻⁵ s⁻¹ |
| 3 | 6.25 | 21.7°E | 11.1°W | 32.8° | 3,679 km | 6.81 m s⁻¹ | 1.53×10⁻⁵ s⁻¹ |
| 4 | 6.75 | 5.4°E | 25.5°W | 30.9° | 3,463 km | 5.94 m s⁻¹ | **2.61×10⁻⁵ s⁻¹** |
| 5 | 3.75 | 17.8°E | 5.2°W | 23.0° | 2,537 km | 7.83 m s⁻¹ | 1.57×10⁻⁵ s⁻¹ |
| 6 | 2.00 | 38.0°E | 23.8°E | 14.3° | 1,582 km | 9.16 m s⁻¹ | 0.76×10⁻⁵ s⁻¹ |
AEW 2 is the clearest long-track example: approximately 4.6°E to 45.3°W, crossing both 0° and 20°W and covering about 5,387 km. AEW 4 had the largest maximum 700-hPa curvature-vorticity strength among the six returned tracks.
Machine-readable results: `outputs/aew_track_summary.csv`.
## Workflow
```text
Official QTrack ERA5 700-hPa winds
↓
qtrack.prep_data
↓
curvature vorticity + 600-km averaging
↓
qtrack.run …