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Appendix 1: Outside Contributions

Sea Surface Temperature and Sea Level From Eastern Pacific GOES Stations

David B. EnField, NOAA/AOML
Instituto Oceanografico de la Armada Guayaquil, Ecuador
Direccion de Hodrografia y Navigacion de la Marina, Callao, PERU

NOVEMBER 2010

Through cooperative arrangements with South American institutions, the TOGA program has maintained a network of nine tide stations and four meteorological stations in Ecuador, Peru and Chile since the mid 1980's. The stations are maintained by NOAA/AOML and the University of Hawaii. The hourly data are transmitted to down-link stations via the GOES satellite in real time and processed. The five-day averages (pentads) at critical stations give us an effective means of monitoring coastal conditions with good time resolution and compact data volume.

The first half of November saw the most intense anomalies yet in this very strong La Niña event, with SSTs 3C below normal and sea levels almost 10 cm below normal. There was a sudden uptick (decrease in the negative anomalies) in the latter half of the month. We don't know whether this is the beginning of the end of the event, or simply the first in a series of intraseasonal oscillations that we typically see during the boreal winter and spring.


Day of   Sea Sfc Temperature    Sea Level Height (cm)
 Nov     Baltra Talara Callao   Baltra Libertad Callao
------   ------ ------ ------   ------  ------  ------
   4       **    14.8   13.9       **      **     97.8
   9       **    15.4   13.9       **      **     94.1
  14       **    15.9   13.7       **      **     95.4
  19       **    16.4   13.8       **      **     99.4
  24       **    17.5   14.7       **      **    100.0
  29       **    17.0   14.1       **      **    101.3

                       Anomalies
   4       **    -3.2   -1.6       **      **     -8.9
   9       **    -2.7   -1.7       **      **    -12.8
  14       **    -2.2   -2.0       **      **    -11.8
  19       **    -1.8   -2.0       **      **     -8.1
  24       **    -0.8   -1.1       **      **     -7.8
  29       **    -1.4   -1.8       **      **     -6.8

For further information contact David.Enfield@noaa.gov
 or go to http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/epac/ 
  ** - Data missing due to hardware failure

FIGURE A1.5 Five-day averages of Sea Surface Temperature (SST, C) and Sea Level Height (SLH, cm) from GOES receiving stations in Ecuador and Peru. Dashed line and shading show climatology departures.


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