Abstract
The Sea Level Anomaly-Torque (SLAT, relative to a reference location in the Pacific Ocean), which means the total torque of the gravity forces of sea waters with depths equal to the Sea Level Anomaly (SLA) in the tropical Pacific Ocean, is defined in this study. The time series of the SLAT from merged altimeter data (1993–2003) had a great meridional variation during the 1997–1998 El Niño event. By using historical upper layer temperature data (1955–2003) for the tropical Pacific Ocean, the temperature-based SLAT is also calculated and the meridional variation can be found in the historical El Niño events (1955–2003), which suggests that the meridional shifts of the sea level anomaly are also intrinsic oscillating modes of the El Niño cycles like the zonal shifts.
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Fang, M., Qu, L. Meridional variation of the 1955–2003 sea level anomalies in the tropical Pacific Ocean associated with El Niño events. J Ocean Univ. China 6, 332–338 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-007-0332-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-007-0332-y