Relocation of GATE from the Pacific to the Atlantic

This talk documents an aspect of the history of the planning of the Global Atmospheric Research Program’s (GARP) Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE) that is related to the geopolitics of the 1970s. GATE was the largest atmospheric field program of all time, with more than 5,000 scientists, technicians, and supporting staff from 72 countries. Observations were made by 13 aircraft, 39 ships, over 1,000 land surface stations, and six satellites. Years of planning by committees of scientists in various countries have been largely documented in reports of the WMO. These documents show that in its earliest planning, GATE was called the Tropical Meteorological Experiment (TROMEX) and was designed to be in the tropical western Pacific. The experimental design was laid out with specific locations for ships and sounding stations across the western tropical Pacific Ocean. However, as is well known, GATE was conducted in the eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean. The reasons for this shift of the project to the other side of the world were left undocumented in the WMO reports, and remained a mystery until recently. To carry out the project in the western Pacific, research ships, including several of the Soviet Union, would need to be refueled and re-supplied at the U.S. base on Kwajalein Island. We have discovered that the reason for the relocation of GATE to the Atlantic was due to Cold War concerns of the U.S. Department of Defense that led to their unwillingness to stage GATE ships out of Kwajelein. A long-buried letter from the DOD documents this historic fact.