The seasonality in large-scale meteorology and low-level cloud amount (CC low ) is explored for a 58 3 58 area in the North Atlantic trades, using 12 years of ERA-Interim and MODIS data, supported by 2 years of Barbados Cloud Observatory (BCO) measurements. From boreal winter to summer, large-scale subsiding motion changes to rising motion, along with an increase in sea surface temperature, a clockwise turning and weakening of low-level winds, and reduced cold-air advection, lower-tropospheric stability (LTS), and surface fluxes. However, CC low is relatively invariant around 30%, except for a minimum of 20% in fall. This minimum is only pronounced when MODIS scenes with large high-level cloud amount are excluded, and a winter maximum in CC low is more pronounced at the BCO. On monthly time scales, wind speed has the best correlation with CC low . Existing large-eddy simulations suggest that the wind speed-CC low correlation may be explained by a direct deepening response of the trade wind layer to stronger winds. Large correlations of wind direction and advection with CC low also suggest that large-scale flow patterns matter. Smaller correlations with CC low are observed for LTS and surface evaporation, as well as negligible correlations for relative humidity (RH) and vertical velocity. However, these correlations considerably increase when only summer is considered. On synoptic time scales, all correlations drop substantially, whereby wind speed, RH, and surface sensible heat flux remain the leading parameters. The lack of a single strong predictor emphasizes that the combined effect of parameters is necessary to explain variations in CC low in the trades.