Sea surface topography fields of the tropical Pacific from data assimilation

Time series of maps of monthly tropical Pacific dynamic topography anomalies from 1979 through 1985 were constructed by means of assimilation of tide gauge and expendable bathythermograph (XBT) data into a linear model driven by observed winds. Estimates of error statistics were calculated and compared to actual differences between hindcasts and observations. 4 experiments were performed as follows: one with no assimilation, one with assimilation of sea level anomaly data from 8 selected island tide gauge stations, one with assimilation of dynamic height anomalies derived from XBT data, and one with both XBT and tide gauge data assimilated. -from Authors