Energy from the tropical sun is stored in ocean water and is carried into the atmosphere as the water evaporates. As the water vapor condenses into clouds and liquid droplets freeze, the energy explodes in the form of weather—a solitary cumulus cloud over the sea or an extensive low‐pressure system sweeping up the eastern seaboard of the United States.On September 23, 1974, GATE—the Atlantic Tropical Experiment of the United Nations' Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP)—completed three months of the most intensive meteorological research ever undertaken. The project, sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization and the International Council of Scientific Unions, involved an area of tropical land and sea covering 20 million square miles and extending from the eastern Pacific Ocean, across Latin America, the Atlantic, and Africa, to the Western Indian Ocean. Seventy nations participated in the research aimed at better understanding the equatorial exchanges of energy and matter that ultimately control much of the world's