A five-year climatology of back-trajectories from the Izaña baseline station, Tenerife, Canary Islands

As a contribution to the climatological characterization of the Izana baseline observatory (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain), back-trajectories were calculated and an air mass climatology was developed for a 5-year period. On a daily basis, 5-day back-trajectories were computed for the 850- and 700-HPa levels from January 1983 to December 1987. Trajectories were separated into long- and short-range flows and classified into categories depending on the path followed by the air masses. Flows from the North Atlantic Ocean were much more frequent than flows from continental sectors. In addition, seasonal variations of the sector frequencies were studied and synoptic meteorological patterns were associated with each trajectory category.