Summary of meteorological conditions over the North Atlantic Ocean during GCE/CASE/WATOX

During the summer of 1988, a team of scientists aboard the NOAA ship Mt. Mitchell and the NOAA King Air aircraft investigated the spatial distributions of sulfur, nitrogen, and related species and their interactions over the North Atlantic Ocean. In support of these measurements, meteorological data from the National Meteorological Center and from rawinsonde data obtained from the ship were archived and back trajectories were calculated. A summary of the meteorological conditions during the cruise is presented using synoptic maps, soundings, cross sections, and isobaric and isentropic back trajectories. Since day‐to‐day variability of the synoptic situation was generally small, one representative day was chosen to illustrate the overall meteorology. During the cruise, three synoptic regimes were encountered: (1) north of the polar front, (2) under the Bermuda/Azores high, and (3) under the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Soundings from three different days illustrate these regimes. Boundary layer depth and cloud layers were also estimated from all the soundings. Cross sections of temperature, wind, and relative humidity describing the vertical structure of the atmosphere along the cruise show the general day‐to‐day uniformity except near the polar front and near the ITCZ boundary. The back trajectories show general air flow patterns and the land mass source regions of air reaching the ship within three days. For parts of the cruise, air reached the ship from North America, Iceland or Greenland, Africa, and South America. Copyright 1990 by the American Geophysical Union