What is GATE
The Global Atmospheric Research Program's (GARP) Atlantic Tropical
Experiment (GATE) was conducted in the summer of 1974. One of the central
objectives of GATE was to understand the scale interactions between
convective activity and large-scale weather systems (ICSU/WMO, 1972); i.e.,
to better understand the mechanism or mechanisms by which deep cumulus
convection is organized by the synoptic or large-scale motions and how
the resulting convective activity affects the synoptic motions that can be
resolved in large-scale models. Phase III of GATE covers the period from
00 GMT 30 August to 24 GMT 18 September.
The data residing at Colorado State University (CSU)came originally from
Prof. Michio Yanai's group at UCLA, which were objectively analyzed by Esbensen
and Ooyoma of Oregon State University. The variables were gridded on 1x1 degree
square grid box, covering an area of 9x9 degree square. There are 19 layers in
the vertical. See gate.rad file for the coordinate information.
About the Dataset Files
The format of files shown below can be found in
README.GATE. It is advisable to download
and "save to file" the datafiles with your browser as some are over 2MB in
size. All files below may also be retrieved via the Data link
above.
Other help information can be found in
README.gate.rad and
README.GATE
At CSU, we have used this data set for single column modeling, as reported
by Pan (1995), entitled "Development and application of a prognostic cumulus
parameterization." For more information, please contact Dr. D.-M. Pan,
pan@canyon.atmos.colostate.edu.
We also used the dataset for cloud-resolving modeling. The results are published
in Xu and Randall (1996; J. Atmos. Sci., Vol. 53, 3710-3736). For a reprint of
this paper, please contact Dr. Kuan-Man Xu,
kmxu@asdsun.larc.nasa.gov.
Some interesting results from this modeling study can be found here.
The horizontal-time cross-sections of surface precipitation rate
(spr-18days.ps - on anaconda), outgoing longwave radiation fluxes
(olr-18days.ps) and integrated liquid water+ice mixing ratio (lwc-18days.ps) are
shown.
