Tropical Highlights

  Table of Atmospheric Indices  (Table 1)

  Table of Oceanic Indices  (Table 2)

  Time Series

  Time-Longitude Sections

  Mean & Anomaly Fields

  Appendix 1: Outside Contributions

• Tropical Drifting Buoys  A1.1
  
• Pacific Wind stress  A1.2
  
• Surface Currents (a)  A1.3
  
• Surface Currents (b)  A1.4
  
  

Tropical Pacific Drifting Buoys

Rick Lumpkin / Mayra Pazos, AOML, Miami

FEBRUARY 2019

During February 2019, 239 satellite-tracked surface drifting buoys were reporting from the tropical Pacific. Similar to January, several drifters indicated very strong (~40 cm/s) eastward anomalies near the equator at 160E-180. Elsewhere, the drifter array indicated that large-scale currents were close to their climatological February strengths across the basin. Some very strong westward anomalies were measured by isolated drifters in the far eastern basin, but this may be associated with Tropical Instability Wave activity rather than large-scale current anomalies.

FIGURE A1.1 a) Top: Movements of drifting buoys in the tropical Pacific Ocean. The linear segments of each trajectory represent a one week displacement. Trajectories of buoys which have lost their subsurface drogues are gray; those with drogues are blue. b) Middle: Monthly mean currents calculated from all buoys 1993-2010 (gray), and currents measured by the drogued buoys this month (black) smoothed by an optimal filter. c) Bottom: Anomalies from the climatological monthly mean currents for this month.