Climate Atlas of the Atlantic Ocean

The presented climate atlas follows with regard to structure and vol­ ume the Bunker Climate Atlas of the North Atlantic Ocean published 1985 by H.-J. The growing interest in climate and climatic change has renewed the demand for climate descriptions of the world oceans. Fields of climate variables are used as boundary conditions, or sea truth, for atmospheric and oceanic models and coupled models of the atmosphere-ocean system. The rapid improvements that modeling has made in recent years also call for more detailed descriptions of processes at the air-sea interface. The climate atlas presented here is restricted to the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic is of special interest for two reasons: The cross-equatorial ocean heat transport is an outstanding climatic feature which contributes to the high sea-surface temperatures in the Northeastern North Atlantic and the mild climate of Europe. From a more technical point of view, the data coverage of the Atlantic is much denser than for other parts of the world oceans. Hence, the Atlantic can well serve as a reliable test area of sea truth for both modeling and satellite remote sensing. The enclosed CD-ROM contains the complete material in color. The presented climate atlas follows with regard to structure and vol­ ume the Bunker Climate Atlas of the North Atlantic Ocean published 1985 by H.-J. Isemer and L. Hasse, which has become a standard work for the climate study community. A new edition was appropriate, since during the last decade much progress was achieved in the correct interpretation of the wind speed reported by merchant ships. As the wind speed is an essential parameter for the fundamental air-sea interactions, namely the exchange of momentum and energy between ocean and atmosphere, considerable impact on resulting…