Tropical Highlights - November 2005

 

The pattern of global tropical sea surface temperature (SST) during November featured near-average SSTs everywhere, except negative anomalies in the eastern tropical Pacific (Fig. T18, Table T2). The overall patterns of convection, SSTs, low-level winds and upper-level winds remained near average over the central and eastern tropical Pacific during November 2005 (Figs. T18, T20, T21 and T25), which is consistent with ENSO-neutral conditions. 

The oceanic thermocline, measured by the depth of the 20°C isotherm along the equator, featured near-average depth in the central Pacific and slightly shallower-than-average depth in the eastern Pacific during November (Figs. T15, T16). Consistent with these conditions, equatorial oceanic temperatures at thermocline depth were near average throughout most of the Pacific and 1-3^oC below average in the eastern Pacific (Fig. T17).

During November, near-average low-level winds were observed over the eastern equatorial Pacific while low-level easterly anomalies (more than 3.0 m s^-1) were observed over the central and western equatorial Pacific (Fig. T20). In the global tropics, enhanced convection (above-average rainfall amounts) was observed over India , across Indonesia , as well as over the North Atlantic/Central America (Figs. T25, T26 and E3), the latter was consistent with the very active Atlantic hurricane season. The Tahiti - Darwin SOI for November is -0.3 (Table T1, Fig. T1), while the equatorial SOI for November is +1.3 (Fig. T2). The equatorial SOI has been greater than or equal to +0.5 for the last three months.