GATE-B scale cloudiness from whole-sky cameras on four US ships.

The largest network of surface cameras ever established in the tropics for studies of cloud cover was deployed during the Global Atmospheric Research Program's Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE) in 1974. Analysis was made of 2572 hourly whole-sky photographs taken aboard four U.S. ships during the daytime hours of nearly every day covering the three phases of GATE. The cloud-cover analyses were made on a grid divided into 100 squares covering most of the overhead sky, much as was previously made for Barbados and adjacent Atlantic Ocean cloudiness. Analyzed cloud types include low, middle, high, two kinds of total, and two kinds of combined upper cloudiness. Rainfall duration was obtained from drops impinging on the glass dome covering the whole-sky lens. - from Author