Tropical Atlantic and Eastern Pacific Ocean Heat Budget Climatology

Heat budget climatology components for the Tropical Eastern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The dataset was produced by Hastenrath and is aggregated by the NASA Earthdata platform from the SCIOPS organization. The temporal coverage and specific data volume are not detailed in the provided information.

Use Cases

• Analyzing seasonal and spatial patterns of ocean heat content in the tropical Atlantic using heat budget components.
• Validating coupled climate model simulations of the Eastern Pacific by comparing against climatological heat flux data.
• Investigating long-term trends in oceanic heat storage and its role in regional climate phenomena like hurricanes.
• Correlating surface heat budget terms with sea surface temperature anomalies for climate diagnostics.

Strengths

• Focuses on two major tropical ocean basins critical for global climate: the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific.
• Provides climatological averages, offering a stable baseline for anomaly detection and model evaluation.

Limitations

• The exact temporal coverage, data resolution, and record count are unknown, limiting reproducibility.
• The dataset appears to be a static climatology, not updated with recent observations, which may reduce relevance for current climate studies.

Provenance

Source

NASA Earthdata platform, aggregated from SCIOPS organization, originally by Hastenrath.

Time Range

Climatological period (specific years unknown).

Geography

Tropical Eastern Pacific Ocean and Tropical Atlantic Ocean.